VEDERE LA SCIENZA 2005

Potenza   10/5/2005 - 19/5/2005

Biblioteca provinciale e Aula Magna dell’Università della Basilicata - Matera
Aula Magna di Scienze del Campus di Macchia Romana dell’Università della Basilicata - Potenza

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Bruno Touschek and the Art of Physics



  1. Author: Luisa Bonolis, Enrico Agapito
  2. Director: Enrico Agapito
  3. Scientific Advisor: Gianni Battimelli, Carlo Bernardini, Giulia Pancheri
  4. Photography: Luca Palmieri, Roberto Pistonesi
  5. Sound: Renato Ciunfrini
  6. Starring:
    Testi / Text
    Luisa Bonolis
  7. Production: MediaScienza in coll. con INFN/ Lab. Naz. Frascati
  8. Italy
  9. 90 min.
  10. 2004

In 1960 Austrian physicist Bruno Touschek (1921- 1978) announced his project for the first electronpositron accelerator in Rome. Touschek jokingly called his machine AdA, both an acronym for Anello di Accumulazione (accumulation ring) and the first name of an aunt of his who lived in Rome. The prototype of a whole new generation of magnetic accelerators, AdA consisted of a ring 1.5-meter in diameter, inside which a beam of electrons and a beam of positrons (identical to electrons, but with an opposite charge) moved simultaneously in opposite directions, causing recurring collisions. Assembled in only one year at the laboratories of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) at Frascati, this machine made it possible to look deeper into the structure of matter and antimatter, thereby opening up a new research path in elementary particle physics which has led for example to the discovery of quarks. This film, which features a bounty of archive footage never shown before, tells the life of AdA's inventor and illustrates the results of his scientific work. Born in Vienna, the son of Jewish woman, Touschek spent some time in Vienna before joining the thriving German school which included world-famous scientists like Sommerfeld, Heisenberg, Weisskopf and Pauli. In 1952 he left Germany and moved to Italy. An eccentric, highly educated and witty man, Touschek was also a gifted sketcher with a penchant for art; as a theoretician, he left an indelible mark on Italian physics. After the biography written by Edoardo Amaldi shortly after his death, this documentary helps shed light on Touschek's life through valuable contributions by physicists who knew him and worked with him, such as Carlo Bernardini, Nicola Cabibbo, Carlo Rubbia, Giorgio Salvini.

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