Francesca Duchini Scholar of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx

In the 1940s a young stu-dent, Francesca Duchini (1919-2010), began her academic career at the Catholic University of Milan, immediately becoming passionate about a discipline: the History of Economic Thought. This article reconstructs for the first time her life, her academic career, her economic thought and in particular her interpretation of Marxism, set against the background of the reception of this current in Italy. For this reconstruction I relied not only on her scholarly production and on material that I couldglean from archival sources, but also on our frequent meetings in my formative years and also later, at whichtime she would reread my work and ask me to rereadher writings, we wouldhurry through cor-respondence, nor did we fail to talk politics. Ours was a real habit of working together, with mutual esteem, but also a sharing of ideas and values.