The school is held at the University of Palermo. The University was founded in 1806 by Ferdinand III of Bourbon, King of Naples and the Two Sicilies, who transformed the Palermo Academy of Studies into a real university. This was the beginning of the process by which UNIPA became what it is today, a mega-university which developed not only in Palermo, but also in central-western Sicily, as a response to specific needs of training and economic, social and cultural development.
Important scientists worked at the University of Palermo; among these, the astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi (1746-1826), who discovered the first asteroid - Ceres, the chemist Stanislao Cannizzaro (1826-1910), who gave a decisive contribution to the modern atomic system, the great architect Giuseppe Venanzio Marvuglia (1729-1814), the Nobel Prize for Physics Emilio Segre (1905-1989), one of the "via Panisperna boys", and Livio Scarsi (1927-2006) who gave a fundamental contribution to the high-energy astrophysics.
The University of Palermo always takes on a social as well as cultural, educational mission, which is typical of a public university, and even more important given the particular geographical and social context in which it operates.
