This site is dedicated to the memory of Ettore Antona, former Professor at the Engineering Faculty of Politecnico di Torino and correspondent member of the Accademia delle Scienze.

Ettore Antona was born in Genova on the 22nd of June, 1931. At the age of seventeen, he graduated in the same year from two high-level schools (a technical and a scientific one), and then registered in the Mechanical Engineering Faculty of Università di Genova.

He graduated in 1954, and he moved to Torino where he started his professional activities at Fiat Aeronautica. In 1956 he obtained the Specialisation Degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Politecnico di Torino. He served as an Officer of the Italian Aernautics at the airport of Orio al Serio, with the responsibility of ground operations.

Very soon he discovered his scientific and academic vocation, and dedicated himself to university teaching at Politecnico di Torino, where he remained active until 2006, lecturing during the years various undergraduate and post-gradute courses, and serving in various important administrative positions.

Deeply influenced in his scientifc thought from the seminal work in the aeronautical field of his predecessors at Politecnico di Torino, and in particular Giuseppe Gabrielli and Placido Cicala, Ettore Antona has authored more than 130 publications on topics of aircraft and spatial vehicles design, security and reliability in aerospace, structural theory, and mechanics of continuous deformability. In recent years, he focussed on the pioneering conception of scientific bases for a future theory of flying safety under relativistic conditions, as well as on a broad rielaboration of the foundations of Aerospace Engineering from a logical, mathematical and philosophical point of view.

In his fifty years of academic activity, he maintened strong links with the aerospace industrial sector in Italy, in the form of consultancies and collaborations. During a short period of activity at the Italian National Research Council at the end of the seventies, he gave a significant contribution to the establishment of an italian research policy strategy in the space field.

Ettore Antona suddenly passed away on the 13th of January 2009, leaving unfinished one of his last endavours, the realisation of his web site.