Famous Italian Inventors & Discoverers

Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian electrical engineer and inventor best remembered for his work on long-distance radio transmission. Marconi, who is credited with inventing the radio, was honored with the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in the field of wireless telegraphy. Also a businessman, Marconi founded the Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company in 1897. 

Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano is best known for his iconic work Ars magna, or The Great Art, which contributed immensely to the field of algebra. Throughout his illustrious life, he had been a physician, a math lecturer, and an astrologer. He was also the first to describe typhus fever clinically.

Guido of Arezzo was an Italian pedagogue and music theorist of High medieval music. He is often credited with inventing the modern staff notation, which later gave rise to Western musical notation. Among his treatises, Micrologus, was one of the most widely circulated medieval treatise on music.

Alfonso Bialetti was an Italian engineer best remembered for inventing the famous Moka Express coffeemaker. The coffee pot, designed by Bialetti in 1933, has been a style icon ever since it achieved popularity during the 1950s. Alfonso Bialetti is also credited with founding Bialetti Industries, a giant kitchen-ware company.

Galileo Ferraris was an Italian university professor, physicist, and electrical engineer. He was one of the pioneers of AC power system. He is also credited to be the inventor of the three-phase induction motor although he never patented his work. He worked at the Italian Industrial Institution and later at the Italian Electrotechnical Association.

Giuseppe Mario Bellanca was an Italian-American airplane designer, builder, and aviation pioneer. He is credited with numerous design firsts and the aircraft designed by him have broken many aviation records. In 1973, Giuseppe Mario Bellanca was made an inductee of the National Aviation Hall of Fame.

Italian astronomer, microscopist and botanist Giovanni Battista Amici is best-remembered for effecting significant improvements in mirrors of reflecting telescopes and development of microscope. His subjects of studies included the satellites of Jupiter and double stars in astronomy and infusoria and fructification of plants in biology. He invented dipleidoscope and direct vision prism and was the first to discover pollen tubes.