Luigi Bianchi (1918-1928)

A mathematician, he led the Scuola Normale in a period of profound economic crisis and difficulties also for the institution, of which he had been a student between 1873 and 1877.
In 1923, the teaching qualification exam was introduced in Italy: despite the efforts of Luigi Bianchi, the new system did not incorporate the equalisation of the diploma obtained at the Scuola Normale to a university degree.
With the new regulation of the Scuola Normale, in 1927 the first post-graduate specialisation places for Letters and Science were introduced: an absolute novelty in the Italian university system, these were - to all intents and purposes - the first PhD degrees.
Under the directorship of Luigi Bianchi, future personalities of great importance studied at the Scuola Normale, including the historian Delio Cantimori, the philosopher Aldo Capitini and Enrico Fermi, the Nobel Prize winner for physics in 1938.