Page 63 - Industrial Plants

Professor Giulio Natta, the 1963 Nobel prize laureate in Chemistry, one of

the fathers of the modern polymer industry

While the Politecnico di Milano has seen no shortage of technology pioneers,
Prof. Giulio Natta deserves a special mention here, particularly because of its
impact on the chemical process technology industry.
As full professor of Industrial Chemistry and chairman of the homologous
Institute, over more than 20 years Giulio Natta and his colleagues had carried out
intensive research in the area of stereospecific polymerization, producing over
800 scientific publications and nearly 300 industrial patents.
This huge effort was crowned in 1954 with the discovery, together with Prof. Karl
Ziegler of the Max Planck Institute in Muelheim, of titanium-based catalysts for
the stereo-selective polymerization of alpha-olefins to produce polyethylene and
later polypropylene. This new process, today known as “Ziegler-Natta Synthesis”,
allowed to obtain polymers with an extraordinarily regular structure and
properties, giving birth to the modern polymer industry. The two scientists were
awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1963.
While the breakthrough was certainly due to Giulio Natta’s genius, a combination
of many positive factors contributed to the discovery: the open mentality of the
university researchers both for fundamental R&D as well as for industrial
applications, as has always been the tradition at the Politecnico; interdisciplinary
research teams, which included experts in organic, industrial, organometallic and Prof. Giulio Natta
structural chemistry;
advanced characterization
techniques; major support by the Montecatini Company,
then an international giant in the production of chemicals,
both during research and subsequent commercialization.
This process technology and associate know-how are still
today one of the stalwarts of the Italian industry on the
global scale.

Prof. Giulio Natta’s experimental apparatus, now in
the Museum of Science and Technology

IndustrIal Plants - May 2017
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