From Rockefeller Foundation to the Bolognese Pupil Giuseppe Levi and Cultural Roots of the Euromediterranean Centre for Genetic and Medicine in Ronzano-Bologna

Abstract

 In the first part of this paper we will present a series of Levi letters, between the 1920’s and 1930’s, that he addressed to the Rockefeller Foundation’s officers, who always supported his research, found in the archives of the Foundation itself. These letters are an important testimony of the Italian political and cultural climate of those years. A second part is dedicated to some of the 80 letters sent by Levi’s student Oliviero Mario Olivo, a professor of the Medical Faculty in Bologna, from 1932 to 1964. Forty years after the death of Giuseppe Levi, we wanted to dedicate to his figure and that of the Professor Victor McKusick, a pioneer in medical genetics died in 2008, the Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Genetic and Medicine in Ronzano-Bologna.