Famous Engineers from Italy

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Updated October 14, 201861 items

List of notable or famous engineers from Italy, with bios and photos, including the top engineers born in Italy and even some popular engineers who immigrated to Italy. If you're trying to find out the names of famous Italian engineers then this list is the perfect resource for you. These engineers are among the most prominent in their field, and information about each well-known engineer from Italy is included when available.

This list is made up of a variety of people, including Leonardo da Vinci and Lisa Nowak.

This historic engineers from Italy list can help answer the questions "Who are some Italian engineers of note?" and "Who are the most famous engineers from Italy?" These prominent engineers of Italy may or may not be currently alive, but what they all have in common is that they're all respected Italian engineers.

Use this list of renowned Italian engineers to discover some new engineers that you aren't familiar with. Don't forget to share this list by clicking one of the social media icons at the top or bottom of the page. {#nodes}
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  • Alessandro Simonetto

    Alessandro Simonetto

    Age: 49
  • Andrea Pininfarina

    Andrea Pininfarina

    Dec. at 51 (1957-2008)
    • Birthplace: Turin, Italy
    Andrea Pininfarina (26 June 1957 – 7 August 2008) was an Italian engineer and manager, former CEO of the Italian coachbuilder Pininfarina, founded by his grandfather Battista "Pinin" Farina in 1930 and still controlled by the family. He was the son of Sergio Pininfarina and was married to Italian aristocrat Cristina Maddalena Pellion di Persano, with whom he had three children, Benedetta, Sergio and Luca.Pininfarina was born in Turin. In 1981 he graduated from Polytechnic of Turin as a mechanical engineer and in 1982 was employed by Fruehauf corporation in the United States of America. In 1983 he joined the family business as Program Manager of the Cadillac Allanté project at Pininfarina. In 1987 he was promoted to Co-General Manager of the company, and in 1988 he became General Manager. In 1994 he was again promoted to Managing Director, and in 2001 he assumed the responsibility of chief executive officer. Pininfarina briefly served as vice president of Italy's Confindustria industry lobby before his death in 2008. In 2004 he was named by Businessweek as one of the "25 stars of Europe", in the category dedicated to innovators, while in 2005 he received the Eurostar 2005 award from The Automotive News Europe, awarded to "top managers who have particularly distinguished themselves in the business sectors covered by their respective automotive companies."Pininfarina died while riding a Vespa near the company’s headquarters in Cambiano outside Turin, Italy, on the morning of 7 August 2008. According to police, a car driven by a 78-year-old man maneuvered from a side street around a parked lorry and pulled directly in front of Pininfarina. Conditions at the time of the accident were very foggy.
  • Andrew Viterbi
    • Birthplace: Bergamo, Italy
    Andrew James Viterbi (born Andrea Giacomo Viterbi; March 9, 1935) is an American electrical engineer and businessman who co-founded Qualcomm Inc. and invented the Viterbi algorithm. He is currently Presidential Chair Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering, which was named in his honor in 2004 in recognition of his $52 million gift.
  • Antonio Beduzzi

    Antonio Beduzzi

    Dec. at 60 (1675-1735)
    • Birthplace: Bologna, Italy
    Antonio Maria Nicolao Beduzzi was an Austrian-Italian theater engineer, painter, and architect who flourished in Vienna at the turn of the 17th century. He was born in Bologna in 1675. He succeeded Burnacini as the theatre architect at the Court in Vienna in 1708. Among his better known designs are: The interior of Melk Abbey for Jakob Prandtauer's baroque reconstruction St. Leopold's Church on Leopoldsberg above Klosterneuburg, near Vienna The cathedral museum of Passau Vienna's Theater am Kärntnertor The frescos of the Landhaussaal in the Viennese Palais Niederösterreich Beduzzi died in Vienna in 1735.
  • Antonio Ferri

    Antonio Ferri

    Dec. at 63 (1912-1975)
    • Birthplace: Italy
    Antonio Ferri (5 April 1912 – 28 December 1975) was an Italian scientist, prominent in the field of aerodynamics, with a specialization in hypersonic and supersonic flight. Born in 1912 in Norcia, Italy, from 1937 he conducted research in Guidonia Montecelio, where the most prominent and advanced research on high-speed aerodynamics was taking place. In 1938, at the age of 26, he received Italy's highest prize for science, the Premio dell'Accademia d'Italia for science. Among the work he conducted there were spectacular experiments in 1939–1940 with supersonic wind tunnels. During World War II, in the period of the Italian Social Republic (or Salò Republic), three days after the Germans occupied Rome on 10 September 1943, Ferri bluffed his way back into the research facility at Guidonia, destroyed the vital equipment and filled a fruit crate with documents of his research before escaping underground. He secluded his wife and family near his home in Fiastra, in the Marche region of the Apennine Mountains (they later were moved on to an Adriatic fishing village), and in October 1943, organized with his brother, Giuseppe Ferri, the Banda Fiastra band of partisans. For the next year he coordinated attacks of the regions anti-fascist bands using the Valle del Fiastrone [Fiastra Valley] as a safe haven to return to and to receive Allied air drops. He eventually made his way to Rome after it was liberated by the Allies, where he made contact with OSS agent Moe Berg and began to work with him translating key documents from the trunk, also passing on his knowledge of the achievements of German science during the war.The facilities at Guidonia were destroyed in the course of the fighting. In 1944, Ferri was brought to the leading American research center in his field, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in Langley, Virginia, where he continued as a major figure in his field. In the immediate postwar period, he studied the use of a biconvex wing profile for high-speed aircraft and developed the Schlieren Flow Visualization method of predicting the impact of shock waves on aircraft wings. He then turned at length to the problem of atmospheric reentry, hypersonic thermofluid dynamics, as applied to the study of supersonic and hypersonic jet engines. He also conducted important studies in the fields of supersonic combustion and aerodynamic heating of high speed aircraft. In all these areas, he made key contributions to the advancement of aerospace engineering. In 1956 he founded the General Applied Science Laboratory.Ferri died in 1975 on Long Island, New York, United States.
  • Arturo Caprotti

    Arturo Caprotti

    Dec. at 56 (1881-1938)
    Arturo Caprotti was an Italian engineer and architect. In 1915 or 1916 he invented the Caprotti valve gear rotary cam poppet valve gear for steam engines of all kinds, but in practice it was employed almost exclusively in railway locomotives.