In 1909 Guglielmo Marconi became the first Italian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Even though he was still young - Marconi was 35 - the prize came at the end of an extraordinarily intense period of work that had lasted almost 15 years, beginning in the laboratory of his family home - Villa Griffone, in the Bolognese hills - with the first experiments into wireless telegraphy.However the theatre of his pioneering work in radio communications were the Atlantic coasts: Great Britain was a second home for the inventor but for the entrepreneur Ireland - where his mother Annie Jameson was from - was his first home where there were important stations for his first transatlantic connections. Canada and the United States saw triumphs for the young Italian visionary that between1901 and 1903 managed - in the midst of polemics, scepticism and great wonder - to receive the first radiotelegraphic signals across the enormous natural obstacle that is the Atlantic Ocean.

Between 1895 and 1903 Marconi was the matchless pioneer in radio communications, but despite speculation that he could win the Nobel Prize even then, the subsequent years in which these remarkable successes were consolidated were equally just as demanding. A fundamental step in the process was the inauguration of the first regular public radio telegraphic service across the Atlantic in October 1907. Without doubt, the exceptional usefulness of emergency radio was proved when passengers were rescued from the transatlantic 'Republic' in January 1909 chiefly through the merits of the radiotelegraph operator Binns who worked for the Marconi Company. It was that year that began with the clamour over the 'Republic' rescue that Marconi won - along with the German scientist Karl Ferdinand Braun - the Nobel Prize for Physics "in recognition for the contribution given to the development of wireless telegraphy".

Marconi's career continued for many years and on dozens of occasions he was celebrated as a living symbol of radio communications, but there is no doubt that being awarded the Nobel Prize was a fundamental moment for Marconi. At just 21, he initiated a true revolution in telecommunications and dedicated his entire career to the development of the radio, combining scientific skills, entrepreneurial qualities, great intuition and extraordinary determination. The Nobel Prize centenary is therefore a fitting occasion for a programme which is rich of initiatives celebrating the great importance in our present times of Marconi as inventor and entrepreneur. Marconi was a cosmopolitan figure whose invention and its further developments are still today a powerful tool for humanity.