Una questione di orgoglio nazionale: il Convegno Volta del 1939

Established in April 1930, the Volta Foundation was one of the centers annexed to the Accademia d’Italia and played a central role in the fascist foreign policy of science because it financed dozens of foreign travel fellowships and nine international conferences, the first dedicated to Nuclear Physics (1931) and the last one before the war on contemporary Mathematics and its applications (1939). Postponed due to the outbreak of the war, and finally cancelled, the Volta 1939 conference was organized by Francesco Severi and Enrico Bompiani, two scholars of the elite of Italian mathematics in the Fascist period. This event deserves an indepth analysis under a double perspective: political and mathematical. Beyond the exclusion of Jewish mathematicians, its organization was in fact an exercise of science anti-diplomacy. All aspects of the event, from the agenda to the selection of speakers, were managed by Severi and Bompiani, who meant to take advantage of the conference to display their personal conception of the history and political geography of mathematics, and to exhibit the Fuhrende Stellung of Italian mathematics vis-à-vis anglophone countries in particular. Considering the extensive correspondence kept in the archives of the Royal Academy of Italy and the Italian Mathematical Union, the paper will focus on the behind-the-scenes to this virtual conference, scrutinizing the practice of international cooperation and propagandistic uses of mathematics in Fascist Italy.