Science and the Arts Supply Four New Italian Senators for Life. (September 3, 2013(

Nicola Nosengo blogging in NatureNews and posted by Davide Castelvecchi reports:

Two scientists are among the four new senators for life appointed today by Italy’s president, Giorgio Napolitano. Particle physicist and Nobel Prize winner Carlo Rubbia and stem-cell specialist Elena Cattaneo will become permanent members of the Italian Senate, along with the orchestra conductor Claudio Abbado and the architect Renzo Piano, whose appointments were also announced today.

Mr Nosengo notes: The appointments are a welcome surprise for Italian scientists, who are having had a hard time trying to make their voice heard in the capital... Cattaneo and Rubbia [along with Abbado and Piano] will now have the same voting rights as elected senators — but for the rest of their lives. Their votes could be significant in a country where governments often survive on thin majorities: the late neuroscientist Rita Levi-Montalcini in 2006 threatened to vote against Romano Prodi’s government – kept alive by a handful of votes — unless he withdrew a plan to cut the budget for scientific research. It worked.

Italy’s constitution gives the president the power to appoint up to five senators for life during his mandate, for “high merits in the social, scientific, artistic and literary fields”.