Salvatore Maugeri at padua university: The establishment of the chair of occupational medicine And the promotion of psychotechnical studies

The aim of the work is to reconstruct, based on unpublished archival materials and through the review of academic records, the events in relation with the foundation of the Institute of Occupational Medicine at the University of Padua and its connection with psychotechnical studies. The birth of the discipline in Italy is briefly outlined, starting with the contribution of its pioneers at the beginning of the twentieth century (Luigi Devoto, Luigi Ferrannini, Nicolò Castellino), and up to the 1940 competition for a professorship position at the University of Siena, whose results determined the future of the second generation of leading scientists in this field (Scipione Caccuri, Salvatore Maugeri, Enrico Vigliani, Giuseppe Aiello and Gustavo Quarelli). Maugeri, a pupil of Luigi Preti who in 1935 had replaced Devoto in the direction of the Clinica del lavoro (Work Clinic) of Milan, turned out to be second in that competition and, following an agreement with the Ente Nazionale di Propaganda per la Prevenzione degli Infortuni sul lavoro (ENPI), in 1941 he was appointed to the newly established chair in Padua – where a lectureship in Occupational Medicine had been already assigned to Rinaldo Pellegrini, Professor of Legal Medicine, since 1932. Once the appeal against the outcome of the Siena competition was won, the evaluation procedure was redone in 1942 under a new Commission, chaired by Agostino Gemelli, and Maugeri was confirmed in Padua. Even if the first period of his activities suffered the consequences of the lack of appropriate clinical and research facilities, worsened by war events and his personal vicissitudes, Maugeri was promoted Full Professor in 1946. Since then, he started reorganizing the Institute, thanks to the funds granted by both the University of Padua and the Istituto Nazionale per l’Assicurazione contro gli Infortuni sul Lavoro (INAIL). After a decade of intense activity, a Postgraduate Specialization School of Occupational Medicine was opened in 1954 but in 1956 Maugeri moved to the University of Pavia. During the difficult years spent in Padua, he had the merit of safeguarding the existence of the Institute of Psychology, thus allowing Fabio Metelli to resume the research activities, at that time mainly oriented towards the common area of Psychotechnics.