Rodolfo Benini: una biografia (Rodolfo Benini: a biography)

This paper proposes a scientific, academic and professional biography of Rodolfo Benini (1862-1956). His long life and his generational location make of Benini the last scholar educated during the ‘golden age’ of the Italian post-unification statistica investigatrice. He started his academic career by taking position in the economic debate of the end of 19th century between protectionists and free-traders; he became a professor at the beginning of the 20th century, when Italian statistics was marking its scientific autonomy by defining itself (largely thanks to him) as a method; he then played the part of ‘dean of Italian statisticians’ during the fascist period, reasserting his heterodox economic assertions in the debate on corporatism of the 1930s, on the eve of retirement. His scientific and academic life, presented here following a strict chronological order, could be interpreted as the result of a continuous confrontation between his peculiar approach to the study of social phenomena and a fast-changing cultural, ideological and disciplinary contex