Nicolo Parravano
Nicolo Parravano (1883-1938)
1938 Obituary [1]
NICOLO PARRAVANO. Professor Nicolo Parravano died suddenly on August 10, 1938, after having officiated only a few weeks before as President of the Tenth International Congress of Chemistry in Rome.
He was born on July 21, 1883, in Fontana Liri. In 1904 he obtained the "Laurea" of Rome University, and became lecturer there in 1908. At the same time he was principal assistant of the Chemical Institute (1905-1913), and he held the office of Vice-Director of the Laboratory for Explosives from 1909 to 1911.
In 1913 he was appointed Professor of Applied Chemistry at Padua University, which he left after a short time for Florence in order to occupy the first chair of Physical Chemistry to be established in Italy. He relinquished this position in 1919 to become Professor of General Chemistry in Rome.
He was appointed Director of the Chemical Institute of Rome University in 1923, Director of the Scuola Farmacia in 1925, and President of the Science Faculty of the Ateneo Romana in 1929. In recognition of his distinguished services to science he was elected Accademico d'Italia in 1929.
Among other honours conferred upon him were the royal Lincei prize, the Le Blanc and Lavoisier medals (by the Societe Chimique de France), and the medal of the Lille Academy of Science. He was elected President of numerous scientific and technical societies of his own country. By the death of Parravano, metallurgists have lost one who had been closely interested in the science from the beginning of his career, and Italian chemists have lost their greatest colleague. Parravano's name will always be associated with the famous research on heterogeneous equilibria and the method of thermal analysis of ternary and quaternary systems, developed between 1908 and 1914. The first Italian institute devoted entirely to metallurgical research was built on his initiative.
Professor Parravano was elected a member of the Institute of Metals in 1928.