The
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, also known in Italian as
Scuola Normale (English:
Normal School), is a higher learning institution in
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
. It was founded in 1810, by
NapoleonNapoleon Bonaparte later known as Napoleon I, and previously Napoleone di Buonaparte, was a military and political leader of France whose actions shaped European politics in the early 19th century.Born in Corsica and trained as an artillery officer in mainland France, Bonaparte rose to prominence...
ic decree, as a branch of the
École Normale Supérieure of ParisThe École Normale Supérieure is a French grande école...
. Since its foundation it has operated a highly selective student admission procedure, and its main goal was, during that period, essentially to form the best college and high school teachers. Recognized as a "national university" in 1862, one year after
Italian unificationItalian unification was the political and social movement that agglomerated different states of the Italian peninsula into the single state of Italy in the 19th century...
, and named during that period as "Normal School of the Kingdom of Italy", it then obtained its administrative autonomy in 1936, surviving the fascist dictatorship of
Benito MussoliniBenito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini,
KSMOM GCTE was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism. He became the Prime Minister of Italy in 1922 and began using the title Il Duce by...
. Since that period, the Normal School has become an entity separate from the
University of PisaThe University of Pisa is located in Pisa, Tuscany. It was formally founded on the September 3, 1343 by an edict of Pope Clement VI, although there had been lectures on law in Pisa since the 11th century...
, with complete administrative, didactic and regulative freedom. The Scuola, together with the
University of PisaThe University of Pisa is located in Pisa, Tuscany. It was formally founded on the September 3, 1343 by an edict of Pope Clement VI, although there had been lectures on law in Pisa since the 11th century...
and with
Sant'Anna School of Advanced StudiesThe Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies of Pisa is a special-statute public university located in Pisa, Italy, operating in the field of applied sciences....
, belongs to the
Pisa University SystemThe Pisa University System is a network of higher education institutions in Pisa, Italy. The following three schools and universities belong to the system:* Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa* Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies* University of Pisa...
.
Fields of study
The Scuola Normale offers classes in both humanities and sciences. Currently the university offers the following classes :
Humanities
- Ancient History and Classical Philology
- Italian Literature and Linguistics
- Art History and Archaeology
- History and Paleography
- Philosophy
Sciences
- Biology
- Chemistry
- Physics
- Computer Science
- Economics
- Mathematics
- Physics (PhD)
- Condensed Matter Physics (PhD)
- Molecular Biophysics (PhD)
- Mathematics (PhD)
- Mathematics for Finance and Business Technologies (PhD)
- Neurobiology (PhD)
- Molecular Biology (PhD)
- Chemistry (PhD)
Admission
In order to become a student at the Scuola Normale, or
normalista, the candidate must pass an extremely selective admissions exam (there are only sixty candidates admitted out of nearly 1000 applicants on average every year), with questions ranging in the entire chosen field of study: for example, for a would-be
Computer ScienceComputer science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation, and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems. It is frequently described as the systematic study of algorithmic processes that create, describe and transform...
student, it's not sufficient to be an
ITInformation technology , as defined by the Information Technology Association of America , is "the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware." IT deals with the use of electronic...
guru; successful candidates will also have much higher-than-average, valuable knowledge about mathematics and physics, too. The
normalisti receive free housing, free lunches and dinners, and a monthly stipend.
Teaching activities
The Scuola does not have a full programme of undergraduate and graduate studies; instead, the students follow the ordinary courses at the public University of Pisa, and complement them with additional classes and seminars taught by the professors of the Scuola Normale. The
normalisti are required to score high marks in their exams at the public university (average marks of at least 27/30 and no mark below 24/30) in order to maintain their scholarship.
The Ph.D. programme, instead, is separate and completely independent of the degrees at the University of Pisa. The Ph.D. course is called
corso di perfezionamento, and the students are called
perfezionandi.
Campus
The Scuola Normale is located in its original historical building, called
Palazzo della CarovanaPalazzo della Carovana is a palace in Knights' Square, Pisa, Italy.It was built in 1562–1564 by Giorgio Vasari for the headquarters of the Knights of St. Stephen, as a renovation of the already existing Palazzo degli Anziani...
, in
Piazza dei CavalieriThe Knights’ Square is one of the most important landmarks in Pisa, Italy, and the second main square of the city. This square was the political centre in medieval Pisa. After the middle of XVI century the square become the headquarters of the Order of the Knights of St...
, in the medieval centre of Pisa.
Nowadays, students are housed in four dorms located nearby in the city.
Famous alumni
- Enrico Fermi
Enrico Fermi was an Italian physicist most noted for his work on the development of the first nuclear reactor, and for his contributions to the development of quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics...
, physicist and Nobel prize winner
- Carlo Rubbia
Carlo Rubbia is an Italian particle physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1984 for work leading to the discovery of the W and Z particles at CERN.-Biography:...
, physicist and Nobel prize winner
- Giosuè Carducci
Giosuè Alessandro Michele Carducci was an Italian poet and teacher. He was very influential and was regarded as the unofficial national poet of modern Italy. In 1906 he became the first Italian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.-Biography:He was born in Valdicastello, a small town in the...
, poet and Nobel prize winner
- Lamberto Cesari
Lamberto Cesari was an Italian mathematician naturalized in the United States.- Biography :...
, mathematician
- Carlo Azeglio Ciampi
is an Italian politician and banker. He was Prime Minister of Italy from 1993 to 1994 and was President from 1999 to 2006. He is currently a Senator for life in the Italian Senate.-Education:...
, economist & politician, lifetime senator, former Prime Minister of Italy, former President of the Italian Republic, former Governor of the Banca d'Italia
- Massimo D'Alema
Massimo D'Alema is an Italian politician. He is also a journalist and a former national secretary of the Democratic Party of the Left...
, (withdrew), politician, former Italian Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs
- Carlo Ginzburg
Carlo Ginzburg is a noted historian and pioneer of microhistory. He is most famous for his ground-breaking book, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller, which examined the beliefs of an Italian heretic, Menocchio, from Montereale Valcellina.- Biography :The son of...
, historian
- Ennio de Giorgi
Ennio de Giorgi was an influential Italian mathematicians of the 20th century.He made important contributions to mathematical analysis, in particular to the study of minimal surfaces and to the regularity of the solutions of elliptic partial differential equations.In terms of the regularity of...
, mathematician
- Giovanni Gronchi
Giovanni Gronchi was an Italian politician who became the second President of the Italian Republic in 1955, after Luigi Einaudi...
, politician, former President of the Republic of Italy
- Giovanni Gentile
Giovanni Gentile was an Italian neo-Hegelian Idealist philosopher, a peer of Benedetto Croce. He described himself as 'the philosopher of Fascism', and ghostwrote A Doctrine of Fascism for Benito Mussolini. He also devised his own system of philosophy, Actual Idealism.- Life and thought :Gentile...
, philosopher and politician
- Fabio Mussi
Fabio Mussi is an Italian politician, minister of university and research in the Prodi II Cabinet. A former member of Italian Communist Party and then Democrats of the Left, he is currently a leading member of the Democratic Left party, of which he was the founding leader.-Career:Born in Piombino,...
, (withdrew), politician, former Italian Minister of the University
- Vito Volterra
Vito Volterra was an Italian mathematician and physicist, known for his contributions to mathematical biology and integral equations....
, mathematician
- Guido Fubini
Guido Fubini was an Italian mathematician, known for Fubini's theorem and the Fubini–Study metric.Born in Venice, he was steered towards mathematics at an early age by his teachers and his father, who was himself a teacher of mathematics...
, mathematician
- Luigi Bianchi
Luigi Bianchi was an Italian mathematician. He was born in Parma, Emilia-Romagna, and died in Pisa.He was a leading member of the vigorous geometric school which flourished in Italy during the later years of the 19th century and the early years of the twentieth century.Like his friend and...
, mathematician
- Leonida Tonelli
Leonida Tonelli was an Italian mathematician, most noted for creating Tonelli's theorem, usually considered a forerunner to Fubini's theorem....
, mathematician
- Jiyuan Yu
Jiyuan Yu is a moral philosopher noted for his work on virtue ethics. Yu has been a Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, in Buffalo, New York since 1997. Prior to his professorship, Yu completed a three year post as a research fellow at the University of Oxford,...
, philosopher
External links
See also
- List of Italian universities
- Pisa
Pisa is a city in Tuscany, central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the Arno River on the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa...