Career
Beginning in 1922, he taught courses in statistics, biometry, and demography at Bocconi University of Milan, and then at the University of Rome as Emeritus Professor. His scientific research was on both methodological and applied statistics, particularly on demography, anthropometry, and economics. As a statistician, he has been particularly interested to the foundations of the method, and he proposed a view of statistics as an empirical history of all the positive sciences.
To deepen these researches he founded a statistical Laboratory at the Catholic University of Milan.
The results are widely discussed in the volumes, Statistica: Teoria e metodi (first edition, 1942), and Teoria della Statistica (1963), that have been studied by thousands of students. Foreign Boldrini, Statistics is a formal science like mathematics and logic, but it is different from them as a scientific inquiry method in the inductive and deductive phases of research.
Beyond academic commitment, he also had several management positions in the state oil industry: he was first named president of Agip (1948–1953), was then vice-president of Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (1953–1962), before succeeding Enrico Mattei as president in 1962, remaining in the post until 1967. Professor of Statistics and Demography at the Universities of Messina, Padua, Milan and Rome.Dean of Political Sciences, Milan Catholic University (1043-1945).
Professor emeritus at Rome University.
