Guglielmo Marconi

He was born on the 25th of April 1874 in Bologna and was son to Giuseppe Marconi and Annie Jameson. At 18 months he moved to Pontecchio Marconi, where he would have indissolubly linked his life to the places of the first Bolognese Apennines.

Marconi is universally known as the discoverer of wireless radio transmission.

In Livorno, Marconi's mother introduced her son to physics professor Vincenzo Rosa, the man who routed the young Guglielmo to the knowledge of electromagnetic waves, which had just been discovered by Hertz in 1891. 

In 1895, at the age of 21, Marconi succeeded in the famous experiment of wireless telegraphic transmission from Pontecchio's family villa and paved the way for modern radio transmission. However, the Italian State did not consider the discovery of the young Bolognese to be interesting, so that his mother (who was of English origin) was able to obtain important work orders in England. Marconi moved to England and stayed there until 1926, though returning occasionally to Italy. The echo of his discoveries and the great fame he was attributed made it possible for him to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909.

In the years of the Great War and immediately afterwards, Marconi's popularity reached overseas, thus making him a very famous man.

Guglielmo Marconi returned to Italy in 1926, to receive a laurea honoris causa or honorary degree in Bologna, and settled permanently in Rome. His patents spread all over the world, and in 1931 he founded Radio Vaticana. In the meantime, but for merely propagandist purposes, Fascism exalted Marconi’s figure, transforming him into a real idol. This antecedent, after the end of the Fascist dictatorship, put the figure of the Italian scientist in a bad light.

Guglielmo Marconi died on the 20th of July 1937, and was buried in Pontecchio, where the incredible adventure of radio broadcasting began.