Giacomo Ciamician

Giacomo Ciamician was an Italian chemist and senator, widely regarded as the founder of organic photochemistry and an early prophet of solar energy. A professor of chemistry at the University of Bologna for more than three decades, Ciamician's laboratory work on the chemical effects of light laid much of the foundation for the later field of photochemistry. In a widely cited 1912 paper published in the journal Science, Ciamician argued that fossil fuels were finite and would eventually run short, and proposed that human industry should instead learn to harness sunlight directly through photochemical processes, anticipating by a century the modern pursuit of artificial photosynthesis and solar fuels. Though the practical technology he imagined did not exist in his lifetime, his early and clearly stated argument that industrial civilization needed to prepare an alternative to coal and oil made him one of the first serious scientific voices to frame solar energy as a long-term substitute for fossil fuels rather than a curiosity.