On the occasion of the renovation and reopening to the public in 2021, the museum was given the name “Giovanni Poleni,” with the intention of remembering the scholar who, in the eighteenth century, initiated the teaching of physics in modern terms in Padua and founded the Physics Cabinet.
Little known nowadays, Giovanni Poleni was a member of the main scientific academies in Europe, was in contact with the greatest scholars and scientists of the time, from Newton to Leibniz, and was considered by many as an essential point of reference.
By naming the new Museum of the History of Physics after Poleni, we wanted not only to pay due tribute to him but also to stimulate the public to think about why a person of this caliber has been forgotten. It should be known that scientific research is characterized by hypotheses, negative or positive experimental verifications, scientific practices in continuous transformation, theories gradually replaced by broader ones, successes, and failures.
The image of science generally presented to the public is instead very simplified, with a unidirectional series of successes, which appear as isolated peaks linked to a great discovery and a great name: the continuous activity, exchanges of knowledge, and the innumerable scientists who contribute to the construction of knowledge are forgotten.
Thus, the very beauty of scientific practice is ignored, and traces of great personalities like Giovanni Poleni have been lost. This excessive simplification is one of the points that the Museum would like to highlight.