Emanuele Foà

Emanuele Foà (16 August 1892

Life and academic career He was born in Savigliano, in a Jewish family of distinguished professionals and officials: his father, Teodoro Foà, was a military physician serving as a major the Royal Italian Army, who died at the age of 42 due to the viral fevers he contracted during the Eritrea war campaign. he succeeded in studying engineering at the Polytechnic University of Turin thanks to a scholarship. The outbreak of World War I in Italy in 1915 forced him to interrupt his engineering studies: he joined the army and served as an artillery officer for the years 1916 and 1917. On 28 October 1917, during the battle of Caporetto, he was taken prisoner and spent a year in a prisoner camp located in Germany.

At the end of the war, notwithstanding his health problems, he successfully completed his university studies: he got his Laurea degree in industrial engineering at the Polytechnic University of Turin in August 1919. From 1 December 1919 he started to work at his alma mater, as assistant professor to the chair of thermal engineering, which at the time was held by Benedetto Luigi Montel. in 1928 he left Turin for Bologna, succeeding, after a brief time period, to Luigi Donati who had held the chair for several decades. The very same year he met Dario Graffi, who had earlier become assistant professor to the chair of engineering physics: their cordial relations became over time a deep and tenacious friendship, lasted until Foà's death.

In Bologna, he passionately devoted himself to teaching as his course handouts, published in several editions, testify: the same time was fruitful for his researches activity, and in 1930 he was appointed ordinary professor. Forced by the law to an early retirement, the Council of the faculty of engineering substituted him with Graffi: he was very happy with the council choice, For his part, Graffi, who could not adopt Foà's handouts due to prohibition imposed by the laws on publications by Jewish authors, published them under his name:

During the World War II period, Foà and his wife managed to stay in Bologna but had to change their accommodation frequently, being hosted by friendly families. In October 1943, being warned by Dino Zanobetti about a raid of the police, he and his wife left their house and went to an apartment made available by Dante Piccioli, a wealthy engineer and friend of theirs. More than a month later, on 7 December, Bologna was bombed and the apartment where Foà and his wife resided was destroyed: being at home, Foà was severely wounded in the right leg and was brought to the Sant'Orsola Hospital.

Honours In 1933, he was elected corresponding member of the Accademia delle Scienze dell'Istituto di Bologna and, after being reintegrated in his role of professor at the University of Bologna in 1945, he became ordinary member in 1947. Also in 1947, jointly with some fellow engineers, he founded the Bologna Section of the Associazione Termotecnica Italiana, he was elected as his first president. — Dario Graffi

Research activity

Selected publications . . . In this article, Foà proves his uniqueness theorem for classical solutions to the Navier-Stokes equation. . This is the companion paper to , where Foà describes his rigorous approach to dimensional analysis. . . . , also reviewed by .