Born in Turin in 1922, Emilio Gatti graduated in Industrial Electrotechnical Engineering at the University of Padova. After a specialization in Electrical Communications at the Galileo Ferraris National Electrotechnical Institute, he began working as a researcher at CISE (Centro Informazione, Studi ed Esperienze) in Milano. After his appointment, in 1950, as Director of the Electronics Division of CISE, he became an international reference in the field for his ability to design and manufacture complex and innovative high-precision electronic circuits and equipment.
The professional relationship between Emilio Gatti and the Politecnico di Milano began in 1951, with his appointment as professor in charge of the Complements of Mathematics course, and continued with him obtaining, two years later, the title of free lecturer in Applied Electronics. In 1957 Gatti became full professor of Electronics at Politecnico, leaving the direction of CISE. Later he held the position of professor of Nuclear Electronics and Physics until 1980, when he got back the chair of Applied Electronics.
During his long professional life at the Politecnico di Milano, Emilio Gatti served as Director of the Department of Physics (1958-1967), Vice Rector (1969-1971) and Dean of the Board of Electronics Engineering Bachelor and Master courses (1990-1993). In 1998 he was appointed professor emeritus, in recognition of his prestigious scientific and university career, and in 2017 the conference room of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering was named after him.
Member of the National Academy of Lincei and of the National Academy of Sciences, he has served as president of the Lombard Institute Academy of Sciences and Letters, president of the Italian section of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), president of the Milan Section of the Italian Electrotechnical Association (AEI), director of the Scientific Council of the Materials Laboratory for Electronics of the CNR.
Emilio Gatti’s main research field was that of electronic measurements and instrumentation for physics, in particular that of radiation and elementary particle detectors and that of electronic instrumentation for spectrometry. His numerous scientific contributions include the invention of the sliding scale method currently used in high-linearity analog-to-digital converters, of the charge preamplifier universally used for radiation detectors, and of the silicon drift detector (SDD) which today constitutes one of the semiconductor detectors with the highest energy resolution for X-ray spectroscopy.
The technologies developed by Gatti have found scientific and industrial applications all over the world, from space missions on Mars to experiments at CERN, passing through electronic instrumentation in the biomedical field.
He bequeathed a large group of scientists and engineers, a working method based on mathematical and physical rigor enlightened by a vivid imagination and an enthusiasm for new challenges typical of the richest minds. Deeply European in scientific training, he had absorbed from the Anglo-Saxon world, and in particular from the American one with which he interacted for a long time, the proactive spirit and the trust in others and in their ability to contribute to an idea or to a research, leaving a valuable legacy to the people who had been lucky enough to know him.