Emilio Gatti the Life and the Worldwide Heritage of a Founding Father of Electronics for Physics

Emilio Gatti (1922–2016), professor of Physics and Electronics at the Politecnico di Milano (Italy), is internationally recognized as one of the scientists and engineers who has given fundamental contributions to the birth and development of the electronics and signal processing for the experimental physics related to ionizing radiation and particles, initially called Nuclear Electronics. His most famous contributions include the invention of the Charge Sensitive Amplifier, the sliding scale technique for precision Analog to Digital Converters, the Semiconductor Drift Chamber, and the theory and synthesis of optimum analog and digital filters for radiation and particle detector signal processing. Many of his inventions and scientific results are currently used as part of the instrumentation for fundamental sciences such as astrophysics, elementary particle physics, materials science, as well as in many medical and industrial applications. This paper presents the person of Emilio Gatti, his studies and inventions starting from his education at the University of Padua and early training at the Galileo Ferraris Institute and through to the schools of Electronics he established at the Politecnico di Milano and promoted in other universities. The paper describes the impact of his research activities and inventions made at CISE, at the Politecnico di Milano and within international collaborations at the Brookhaven National Laboratory (USA) and the Max-Planck Institute (Germany), as well as the impact he had in several companies.