Rita Brunetti

Rita Brunetti (23 June 1890 – 28 June 1942) was an Italian physicist who became known for her research into spectroscopy and radioactivity. She was the director of the Cagliari Institute of Physics and later, the Alessandro Volta Institute of Physics in Pavia.

Biography Brunetti was born on 23 June 1890 in Milan to Gaetano and Edvige Longhi and obtained her classical diploma at the GC Beccaria high school in 1908. The next year, with the aid of a scholarship, she enrolled in pure mathematics courses at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. She soon switched her curriculum to study physics and graduated in 1913.

After she finished school, she received the Lavagna Prize, which allowed her to complete an additional year of advanced training in mathematical physics, during which time she studied gas discharge using applied spectroscopy. Her teachers included the physicists, Augusto Raffaele Occhialini, Angelo Battelli and Antonio Garbasso, who would become influential in her use of spectroscopy.

Career In 1915, Brunetti was appointed an assistant professor of experimental physics at the Instituto di Studi Superiore di Firenze, located in Arcetri, where she received direction from Garbasso in her spectroscopy studies. (She also attended courses with Enrico Persico, Enrico Fermi and Franco Rasetti.) Brunetti then followed Garbasso to the Arcetri Astronomical Observatory, where her mentor had moved his research. There, she met Antonino Lo Surdo, who, in 1914 (at the same time as Johannes Stark) discovered the phenomenon of spectral line splitting in an electric field.

Post-war years In 1923, she obtained a teaching qualification in experimental physics as the "first woman in post-unification Italy to win a competitive exam for a chair of physics." Her official title was Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Ferrara. At the Ferrara Institute of Physics and the adjoining Meteorological Observatory, she directed renovations and modernizations. When Brunetti moved to the Institute of Physics in Cagliari in 1928, she began similar modernizations and met a physicist who would become her longtime collaborator and companion Zaira Ollano. One source suggests that her death resulted "likely from professional causes."

Selected memberships Member of the Italian Physical Society (from 1926) Corresponding member of the Academy of Physical Sciences of the Bologna Institute (since 1927) Member for physics of the National Research Council (in 1934) Corresponding member of the Lombard Institute of Sciences and Letters (in 1938)