The Foundation
History
Carlo Erba was not only the greatest pioneer of the chemical-pharmaceutical industry in our country, but he was also among the promoters of other important industrial, cultural, and educational initiatives, including the establishment of the Edison electric company and the “Istituzione Elettrotecnica Carlo Erba” at the Polytechnic of Milan (1886), which he generously endowed.
It was therefore natural to name after Carlo Erba an initiative with cultural and scientific purposes conceived and promoted in 1959 by the company Carlo Erba s.p.a. and its Managing Director, Edoardo Visconti di Modrone Erba. The Visconti family made available a splendid headquarters at the Palazzo Visconti in Milan and allowed the Foundation to be adorned with the “Biscione”, a historic component of the family coat of arms.
The institution, already operating for some time, acquired autonomy through the establishment in 1975, by Montedison s.p.a. and Carlo Erba s.p.a.. The Carlo Erba Foundation obtained legal recognition in 1982 (Presidential Decree no. 365 of 23.3.1982). Subsequently, both Montedison s.p.a. and Carlo Erba s.p.a. merged with other companies. The Carlo Erba Foundation initially concentrated its activity in the various fields of the medical and pharmaceutical sciences. From the beginning, it constituted in these areas, and still represents, a point of reference, meeting and stimulus for the Italian and international scientific community, mainly through the organization of a large number of conferences and conventions, to which illustrious exponents of the sectors concerned freely give their contribution, and to which all those who intend to do so can attend without any restriction and without expense.
Carlo Erba
Born in Vigevano in 1811, he graduated as a pharmacist from the medical-surgical-pharmaceutical faculty of the University of Pavia in 1834. He subsequently took over the management of the ancient Brera pharmacy, in via Fiori Oscuri in Milan.
In addition to his commercial activity, he was successfully involved in laboratory research aimed at producing medicines that until then had only been imported from abroad, meeting with considerable success among pharmacists, who increasingly requested his products.
In the following years, he therefore opened the first pharmaceutical laboratory in Italy, from which the Carlo Erba company was born.
In 1946, it was transformed into Carlo Erba s.p.a.
Unmarried and without children, he left the company to his younger brother, Luigi, a pianist, married to Anna Brivio.
He died in Milan in 1888.
