ABSTRACT
The person now standing before you and about to speak on the work of Merton and its spread in Italy was a sociologist at the very beginning of his career towards the end of the 1940s. Like many of those who as university students were interested in the social sciences and for lack of other opportunities had tried to make contact via the Law Faculty, I received my degree a few years before, defending a thesis on the concept of “person” in the philosophy of law, a discipline whose presence in the Law Faculties had a Bildung tradition for juridi cal and political culture that went back to our Risorgimento.
