WOMEN OF NAPLES
Maria Bakunin
Maria Bakunin: a Russian scientist in Naples.
Maria Bakunin was a brilliant, talented and generous woman scientist. Third child of Mikhail Bakunin and Antonia Kviatovoska, daughter of a Polish political deportee, Maria was born in 1873 in Krasnoyarsk, a city in central Siberia. After his father's death in 1876, the family settled in Naples. Maria, who family and friends call Marussia, spent her youth in the Capodimonte neighborhood, in a wealthy context full of cultural stimuli. Always passionate about science, she became a trainer at the Institute of Chemistry in Naples and in 1895, at a very young age, she graduated in Chemistry at the University of Naples with a thesis on stereochemistry. In particular, he introduced a method to achieve cyclization using phosphoric anhydride; he studied pigments and melanins so that his scientific commitment can be said to coincide with the birth and establishment of modern chemistry. In addition to being a researcher, Maria Bakunin is also a passionate teacher. In fact, in 1909 she became a professor of Applied Chemistry at the Polytechnic High School of Naples, from 1912 full professor of Technological Chemistry and from 1940 to 1947 she held the chair of Applied Chemistry at the University of Naples.
Her interest focuses above all on oil shales, particular sedimentary rocks that are widespread in some areas of southern Italy. Bakunin uses his skills to extract ichthyol from such rocks, a mineral tar of organic origin which, when processed, is used as an ointment for the treatment of dermatological diseases such as psoriasis. A woman with a strong personality and a decisive character, extremely famous in the Neapolitan environment, Maria Bakunin is a prominent figure not only for the figure of scientist and teacher but also for the role of director of various scientific institutions.
In 1919 he became vice-president of the Naples Section of the Association of General and Applied Chemistry, in 1932, she was elected president of the academy of physical and mathematical sciences of the national science society. She is the first female member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in the physical sciences class in 1947. An intense existence, that of Marussia, a woman of visionary talent and competent in the field of science, capable of masterfully dominating and experimenting.
Naples was certainly the perfect place to realize her revolutionary ideals. Maria Bakunin passed away in her home, inside the Chemical Institute of the University, in via Mezzocannone 10, on 17 April 1960 (the access door to the apartment is no longer there, but the plaque with the house number.
Maria Bakunin's funeral
Photo Credits: © Archivio fotografico Carbone
Federico II University Institute of Chemistry and Physics
The Institute of Chemistry and Physics where Maria Bakunin taught and worked was built in the context of the great project of Redevelopment of Naples. The Federico II University was faced with a substantial reorganization of its spaces. The project was entrusted to engineers Guglielmo Melisurgo and Pier Paolo Quaglia, who between 1893 and 1896 drew up a plan that included not only the renovation of the former Jesuit college (which dates back to the mid-sixteenth century), but also the construction of three new buildings, intended to house the Rectorate, the Faculties of Letters and Law and the Institutes of Chemistry and Physics. These works were completed with the construction of the central body of the university on the Rettifilo and the two set-back bodies, connected by the staircase that allowed the difference in height of more than seven meters to be overcome. The Institute of Chemistry was located in the building on the left of the famous Scalone della Minerva, with an entrance on via Mezzocannone 4. This building, the twin of the one that housed the Institute of Physics, has a T-shaped plan and has an octagonal “amphitheatre-like” classroom located near the junction with the staircase, a feature that highlighted the design attention towards the teaching needs of the time. The then director of the Institute of Chemistry was Agostino Oglialoro Todaro, Bakunin's husband since 1896. The history of the Institute continued with further changes that reflected the transformations of the Neapolitan University. In 1970, thanks to the availability of the premises freed by the transfer of the Faculty of Engineering to the new complex in Piazzale Tecchio in Fuorigrotta, the Institute found a new location in via Mezzocannone 16. The new millennium marked a phase of further territorial expansion of the University, with the construction of the Monte Sant'Angelo complex where the Department of Chemical Sciences has been located since 2012.
