Il carteggio fra Valentino Cerruti e Quintino Sella

Abstract

Although the correspondence is in a single direction, and develops in just ten years, it shows the frenetic and multifaceted activity carried out by Sella with the aim of establishing Rome as the capital of Italian science and the difficulties that hindered that project. A political and cultural partnership was established between Sella, Cremona and Cerruti, which was not without difficulties and which risked breaking apart. Cerruti was entrusted with various tasks and duties: solving mathematical problems for Sella's parliamentary activity, secretarial duties (selecting correspondence with academics, institutions, libraries, sending proofs or reminders to authors or rapporteurs of notes and memoirs to be approved for printing, bureaucratic and administrative practices), revision of Sella’s Trattato sul regolo calcolatore for the 2nd edition, checking the Sella’s transcriptions of Codex Astensis and drafting indexes. The experience gained through contact with Sella will influence Cerruti’s scientific and parliamentary career in Rome, the political-institutional activity carried out in the Ministry of Education, in the roles of rector of the University, dean of the Faculty of Sciences, commissioner and director of libraries, and as project rapporteur for the Higher Technical Schools and for the foundation of the Polytechnic of Turin.