The reaction of Italian physicists to the innovations of the ‘new physics’ has been studied by analysing their scientific production and their textbooks. Their stand appears to have been the result of several components: absence or weakness of lines of research in the last three decades of the nineteenth century ; firm attachment to the conceptual and philosophical foundations of classical mechanics; and hostility to the quantization of energy. The consequence has been a widening of the gap between the research (...) done in Italy and the main lines of development of the discipline. (shrink)

The development of researches on thermo- and galvanomagnetic effects in Italy between 1911 and 1926 has been studied by taking into account several factors: a partial isolation of the Italian physics community; its delay in adopting the microscopic and statistical approach to the conduction properties of metals; a choice of a dualistic theory of conduction in a context of a predominance of theories in which the only mobile carrier was the electron; and an epistemological stand that considered the theory-experiment relation (...) more relevant than the theory's compatibility with background knowledge. (shrink)