Access the Online Archive
Search the Historical Archive of the Pirelli Foundation for sources and materials. Select the type of support you are interested in and write the keywords of your research.
    Select one of the following categories
  • Documents
  • Photographs
  • Drawings and posters
  • Audio-visuals
  • Publications and magazines
  • All
Help with your research
To request to view the materials in the Historical Archive and in the libraries of the Pirelli Foundation for study and research purposes and/or to find out how to request the use of materials for loans and exhibitions, please fill in the form below. You will receive an email confirming receipt of the request and you will be contacted.
Pirelli Foundation Educational Courses

Select the education level of the school
Back
Primary schools
Pirelli Foundation Educational Courses
Please fill in your details and the staff of Pirelli Foundation Educational will contact you to arrange the dates of the course.

I declare I have read  the privacy policy, and authorise the Pirelli Foundation to process my personal data in order to send communications, also by email, about initiatives/conferences organised by the Pirelli Foundation.

Back
Lower secondary school
Pirelli Foundation Educational Courses
Please fill in your details and the staff of Pirelli Foundation Educational will contact you to arrange the dates of the course.
Back
Upper secondary school
Pirelli Foundation Educational Courses
Please fill in your details and the staff of Pirelli Foundation Educational will contact you to arrange the dates of the course.
Back
University
Pirelli Foundation Educational Courses

Do you want to organize a training programme with your students? For information and reservations, write to universita@fondazionepirelli.org

Visit the Foundation
For information on the Foundation's activities and admission to the spaces,
please call +39 0264423971 or write to visite@fondazionepirelli.org

A Nobel for Pirelli:
Giulio Natta and Synthetic Rubber

He was the most famous Italian chemist of the twentieth century and the only Italian ever to have ever been awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. The name of Giulio Natta now appears in school books for his most important invention: that of polypropylene, a type of plastic that, together with other polymers, completely revolutionised our consumer society. Toys, kitchen utensils, food containers, swimming-pool lane floats, and synthetic grass.

Natta, who was born in Imperia in 1903 and graduated from the Politecnico University in Milan in 1921, also made his mark with other important studies and discoveries. In the late 1930s, two years before the Second World War broke out, the Italian chemist was commissioned by Pirelli – through SIPGS, the Italian Society for the Production of Synthetic Rubber, which had just been created by Pirelli and IRI – to find an alternative so as to avoid the increasing difficulties involved in importing natural rubber from the great plantations in South America and from the British, French and Dutch colonies in the Far East. The papers preserved in our Historical Archive show how in 1937, when Natta was a full professor at the Politecnico University of Turin, he worked in the laboratory to solve the problems involved in producing synthetic rubber and in 1938 he filed two patents for the separation of butylene and butadiene.

Innovative technology for the manufacture of artificial rubber and the first tyres made entirely with materials from Italy also started coming out from the Pirelli factories in Milano Bicocca. From April 1942, the IRI plant in Ferrara produced 13,000 tons of synthetic rubber, which managed to satisfy about half of all Italy’s needs during the war. Production continued until July 1944, when Allied bombing raids put the factory out of action. Evidence of Giulio Natta’s work in Pirelli can be found in his personnel file, in some papers devoted to studies into synthetic rubber and in many of the thousands of test specifications produced by the Tyre Research and Development department, which contains the first use of the word “cauccital” – a combination of “rubber” and “Italy” – which was made in the laboratory and is now commonly used in the rubber industry. Synthetic rubber and natural rubber are still today the two main ingredients for tyre production. These materials have very particular and specific properties, making each Pirelli product unique.

He was the most famous Italian chemist of the twentieth century and the only Italian ever to have ever been awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. The name of Giulio Natta now appears in school books for his most important invention: that of polypropylene, a type of plastic that, together with other polymers, completely revolutionised our consumer society. Toys, kitchen utensils, food containers, swimming-pool lane floats, and synthetic grass.

Natta, who was born in Imperia in 1903 and graduated from the Politecnico University in Milan in 1921, also made his mark with other important studies and discoveries. In the late 1930s, two years before the Second World War broke out, the Italian chemist was commissioned by Pirelli – through SIPGS, the Italian Society for the Production of Synthetic Rubber, which had just been created by Pirelli and IRI – to find an alternative so as to avoid the increasing difficulties involved in importing natural rubber from the great plantations in South America and from the British, French and Dutch colonies in the Far East. The papers preserved in our Historical Archive show how in 1937, when Natta was a full professor at the Politecnico University of Turin, he worked in the laboratory to solve the problems involved in producing synthetic rubber and in 1938 he filed two patents for the separation of butylene and butadiene.

Innovative technology for the manufacture of artificial rubber and the first tyres made entirely with materials from Italy also started coming out from the Pirelli factories in Milano Bicocca. From April 1942, the IRI plant in Ferrara produced 13,000 tons of synthetic rubber, which managed to satisfy about half of all Italy’s needs during the war. Production continued until July 1944, when Allied bombing raids put the factory out of action. Evidence of Giulio Natta’s work in Pirelli can be found in his personnel file, in some papers devoted to studies into synthetic rubber and in many of the thousands of test specifications produced by the Tyre Research and Development department, which contains the first use of the word “cauccital” – a combination of “rubber” and “Italy” – which was made in the laboratory and is now commonly used in the rubber industry. Synthetic rubber and natural rubber are still today the two main ingredients for tyre production. These materials have very particular and specific properties, making each Pirelli product unique.

Multimedia

Images