The quiet oasis of the Botanical Garden in Cagliari: the academic path of Eva Mameli

Abstract

On her arrival in Cuba, at thirty-four, Eva Mameli was already an active lecturer and researcher in Italy, with a sound university preparation behind. The formative years, first at the University of Cagliari and then at the University of Pavia, offered her a fruitful setting of opportunities for the subsequent practice of the profession. Professors and scholars who stimulated her passion for science and research were of major importance: first of all, the Sicilian professor Giuseppe Oddo who – although less mentioned in biographical reconstructions than other her teachers, best known on the international academic scene, as Giovanni Briosi or Gino Pollacci – represented for Eva the connection point between the two universities. In these intense years of training, there were other important presences, as her brother Efisio, professor of chemistry first in Cagliari, then in Pavia. The hypothesis that the young student attended the course of one of the most renowned scientists of that period, Rina Monti, first woman to achieve a university chair after the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy, is also appealing.
Exemplary figures and eminent professors of an era that Eva remembered as it follows: «The mild-mannered figures of my teachers come back now to my memory. We worked with them, even knowing it would be a life of sacrifice for several years. I remember the beginning, in the peaceful oasis of the Botanical Garden of Cagliari, each scrutinized plant, in the first years of study, was a treasure chest of hidden treasures, a bunch of questions – and the doubt: will I succeed? – And the desire: if I could»¹.
Aim of this article is thus to shed light on the educational and professional stages prior to Eva Mameli’s departure for Cuba, and to examine fully even the unpublished documents, such as her college transcripts, in order to highlight the relationships with those professors who contributed to the formation of the resolute scientist from Sassari.

¹ Eva Mameli Calvino ha lasciato la Stazione Sperimentale di Floricoltura, in «Corriere della Rivera», 18 marzo 1959.