Mario Ageno and the status of biophysics.

This essay focuses on Mario Ageno (1915-1992), initially director of the physics laboratory of the Italian National Institute of Health and later professor of biophysics at Sapienza University of Rome. A physicist by training, Ageno became interested in explaining the special characteristics of living organisms origin of life by means of quantum mechanics after reading a book by Schrödinger, who argued that quantum mechanics was consistent with life but that new physical principles must be found. Ageno turned Schrödinger's view into a long-term research project. He aimed to translate Schrödinger's ideas into an experimental programme by building a physical model for at least a very simple living organism. The model should explain the transition from the non-living to the living. His research, however, did not lead to the expected results, and in the 1980s and the 1990s he focused on its epistemological aspect, thinking over the tension between the lawlike structure of physics and the historical nature of biology. His reflections led him to focus on the nature of the theory of evolution and its broader scientific meaning.

Penicillin and the reconstruction of Japan.

This paper explores postwar American strategies regarding penicillin in Japan. Perceived as both an American gift and a symbol of reconstruction, penicillin played a singular role in Washington's postwar policies towards Europe and Japan. Washington encouraged US pharmaceutical companies to penetrate Europe but sought to protect intra-European trade. In Japan, however, importing penicillin from the US or establishing private American factories was forbidden. Jackson W. Foster implemented a smaller-scale, military-directed version of the US's wartime penicillin project. In this paper, it is argued that the MacArthur administration aimed to boost Japanese penicillin production and transfer American industrial culture to Japan. This was initially a major success. However, the Japanese pharmaceutical industry failed to break down barriers to market entry established by first movers and, consequently, was uncompetitive throughout the twentieth century. This paper regards the American penicillin project in Japan as a factor in the weakness of the postwar Japanese pharmaceutical industry.

Making biomedicine in twentieth-century Italy: Domenico Marotta (1886-1974) and the Italian Higher Institute of Health.

This paper focuses on the role played by Domenico Marotta, director of the ISS (Higher Institute of Health) for over twenty-five years, in the development of twentieth-century Italian biomedicine. We will show that Marotta aimed to create an integrated centre for research and production able to interact with private industry. To accomplish this, Marotta shifted the original mission of the ISS, from public health to scientific research. Yet Mussolini's policy turned most of the ISS resources towards controls and military tasks, opposing Marotta's aspiration. By contrast, in the post-war years Marotta was able to turn the ISS into the most important Italian biomedical research institution, where research and production fruitfully cohabited. Nobel laureates, such as Ernst Chain, and future Nobel laureates, such as Daniel Bovet, were hired. The ISS built up an integrated research and production centre for penicillin and antibiotics. In the 1960s, Marotta's vision was in accord with the new centre-left government. However, he pursued his goals by ruling the ISS autocratically and beyond any legal control. This eventually led to his downfall and prosecution. This also marked the decline of the ISS, intertwined with the weakness of the centre-left government, who failed to achieve structural reforms and couple the modernization of the country with the democratization of its scientific institutions.