DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AND GUESTS

Leading figures in cultural, political and economic life have studied at the Collegio Ghislieri, in every period of its long history. The most famous is certainly Carlo Goldoni, who was a student in the years 1723-1725, but we can also remember (among many others) the pathologist Agostino Bassi (1773-1786); Filippo De Filippi (1814-1867), the first divulger in Italy of Darwinian theories; Giuseppe Zanardelli (1826-1903) future Guardian and Prime Minister; Battista Grassi (1854-1925), who revealed the role of the Anopheles mosquito in the transmission of malaria; the pathologist Antonio Carini (1872-1950), discoverer of many infectious agents, including the one that took his name (Pneumocystis Carinii); the neurologist Ottorino Rossi (1877-1936), Magnifico Rettore of the University of Pavia; Agostino Gemelli (1878-1959), founder of the Catholic University; the president of the Constitutional Court Giuseppe Cappi (1883-1963); Giuseppe Antonio Ghisalberti (1891-1970), for twenty-five years president of the Province of Cremona; the architect Giovanni Muzio (1893-1982), designer of the buildings of the Catholic University and Cariplo in Milan; the president of the Senate Ennio Zelioli Lanzini (1899-1976); the minister Ezio Vanoni (1903-1956); the pharmacologist Vittorio Erspamer (1909-1999), discoverer of serotonin; the philologist Gianfranco Contini (1912-1990); the martyr of the Resistance and Master of the Ghislieri, Teresio Olivelli (1916-1945); the jurist Vittorio Grevi (1942-2010), one of the inspirers of the new Code of Criminal Procedure of 1989; Carlo Bernasconi (1929 – 2014) one of the fathers of Italian hematology, also Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Collegio Ghislieri from 1983 to 2014; Gianfranco Bettetini (1933 – 2017), considered one of the founding fathers in Italy, together with Umberto Eco, of Semiotics, with particular regard to the mass media.

Currently more than two hundred and fifty Ghislerians hold university chairs in Italy and abroad.

The Collegio has seen not only students and Rectors within its walls, but also numerous personalities who have visited it: Napoleon in 1805, Garibaldi in 1848, Emperor Franz Joseph in 1857, Vittorio Emanuele II in 1859, Vittorio Emanuele III in 1925, Mussolini in 1932.

In closer years we must remember the visits of the Presidents of the Republic, patrons of the Collegio (Luigi Einaudi in 1955, Giovanni Gronchi in 1961, Francesco Cossiga in 1986, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro in 1993, Sergio Mattarella in 2017); that of the Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1967 (on the occasion of the celebrations for the IV centenary of the Collegio); that of the Secretary General of NATO Manfred Wörner in 1991, and, in the same year, that of the President of the Federal Republic of Germany Richard von Weizsäcker and of the President of the Senate Giovanni Spadolini; in 1999 that of the then President of the European Commission Romano Prodi; that of the United States Ambassador to Italy Malvin F. Sembler, in 2002.

Many illustrious personalities have been hosted in the College on the occasion of scientific conventions, conferences, seminars and the like. We remember the writer Edward Morgan Forster (1958); the Nobel Prize for literature Salvatore Quasimodo (1959); Albert Sabin, discoverer of the polio vaccine (1965); the Nobel Prize winners for physics Alfred Kastler (1969), Felix Bloch (1973) and Emilio Segrè (1975); the Nobel Prize winners for medicine Arthur Kornberg (1981) and J. Lederberg (1983); the philosopher of science Karl Popper (1983); the Nobel Prize for physics Carlo Rubbia (1984); the President of the Accademia della Crusca Giovanni Nencioni (1984); the Director of the Scuola Normale di Pisa Salvatore Settis (1984); the jurist Natalino Irti (1986); the publisher Giulio Einaudi (1987); the Nobel prize-winners for economics, Herbert Simon, and for chemistry, Sir Derek Barton (1988); the psychoanalysts Cesare Musatti and Mario Trevi (1988); the philologist Cesare Segre (1990); the philosopher Fulvio Papi (1991); the Director of the “Corriere della Sera” Paolo Mieli (1992); the Nobel prize-winner for physics Jerome I. Friedman (1993); the linguist Luca Serianni (1993); the musicologist Francesco Degrada (1994); the philologist Maria Corti (1995); the journalist and critic Aldo Grasso (1995); the Procurators of the Republic Gian Carlo Caselli and Pierluigi Vigna (1996); the oncologist Umberto Veronesi (1997); the publishers Carlo Feltrinelli and Giuseppe Laterza (1997); the pharmacologist Silvio Garattini (1998); the Director of “Corriere della Sera” Ferruccio De Bortoli (1999); the Nobel prize-winners for physics, Klaus von Klitzing, and for medicine, Günter Blobel (2000); the philosopher Giulio Giorello (2001); the President of the Accademia della Crusca Francesco Sabatini (2003); the archaeologist Paolo Matthiae (2004); the ambassador and essayist Sergio Romano (2005); the linguist Tullio De Mauro (2007); the geneticist Edoardo Boncinelli (2008); the writer Abraham Yehoshua (2008); the Master of the St. John’s University of Florence (2008). John’s College of Cambridge Christopher Dobson (2009); the astrophysicist Marghertita Hack (2009); the Presidents of the Constitutional Court Giovanni Flick (2008), Gustavo Zagrebelsky (2009) and Valerio Onida (2010).

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