Ravindra Vaze

The year 2026 marks the celebration of the bicentenary of the birth of the Italian chemist Stanislao Cannizzaro. He is regarded as one of the pioneers in the history of modern chemistry and also as one of the most symbolic intellectuals of nineteenth-century Europe. He was a soldier, politician and family man who still found time for chemistry. It is highly fitting to celebrate the impact of his life and endeavours.

Stanislao Cannizzaro, the fourth and youngest son of Mariano Cannizzaro and Anna di Benedetto, was born on 13 July 1826 at Palermo, Sicily. His father, Mariano, born in Messina, became a magistrate in Palermo, minister of police and later President of the High Court of Chancery. His mother was a member of a noble Sicilian house. At the time of his birth, Sicily was under the rule of the Bourbon King of Naples.

Stanislao was partly educated at home and partly at a native school where he excelled especially in mathematics. However, the school curriculum in Sicily at that time was under the control and direction of the priests. Sir William Tilden, in his memorial lecture on Cannizzaro, says — “Education frowned on as a design of the liberals to revolutionise the state was so successfully discouraged that in 1837 it was calculated that 2 per cent of the rural population could read and not very much more of the dwellers in the towns.” His studies at the school were temporarily interrupted by the cholera epidemic of 1837. He somehow recovered from it but lost two of his brothers…read more on NOPR