Domenico Marotta

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Domenico Marotta (July 28, 1886 – March 30, 1974) was an Italian chemist who played a key role in Italian science and medicine. He was born in Palermo and earned a degree in Chemistry and Pharmacy from the University of Palermo in 1910, with research on the action of nitric acid on phthalacene. He gained early recognition during a cholera outbreak and then moved to Rome in 1911 to work at the Institute of Public Health under Emanuele Paternò.

Marotta won a competition for the chair of Analytical Chemistry at the University of Florence, and in 1935 he was appointed director of the Higher Institute of Health (ISS), a position he held until 1961. He is considered the founder of the ISS. As director, he expanded the institute by creating laboratories, facilities, a library, a workshop, and a scientific museum; he also organized conferences and trained researchers.

In 1938 he founded the scientific journal Annali dell'Istituto Superiore di Sanità (which was renamed in 1965). He helped Italy recover and modernize after World War II, including the construction of Italy's first electron microscope in 1946. The Missiroli Plan of 1947 targeted malaria and contributed to defeating the disease. Marotta attracted renowned scientists to Italy, including Nobel laureates Ernst Boris Chain and Daniel Bovet. He established the International Center for Microbiology and Chemistry, directed by Chain, which oversaw a pilot plant for penicillin and other fermentation products that became active in 1951, and a penicillin factory was built in Italy to boost pharmaceutical autonomy.

After leaving the ISS, Marotta served as president of the National Academy of Sciences (Accademia dei XL) from 1962 to 1974. In his private life, he joined Freemasonry in 1910, became a Master Mason in 1912, and was affiliated with the Loggia Universo in Rome.