A native of Bergamo, he was awarded a degree in Chemistry (1908) and a degree in Pharmacology (1917) by the University di Pisa. A pupil of Raffaello Nasini (1854-1931) and assistant at the Pisa Institute of General Chemistry starting in 1908, he was qualified for university teaching in 1913. During World War I he distinguished himself, while working with the Bureau of Inventions and Research of the Ministry of Arms and Munitions, by identifying the radioactive elements in Italian minerals. Thanks to his discoveries made in the Lurisia valley, in Piemonte, he was assigned to accompany the Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie during her mission to Italy (1918) to search for uraniferous minerals such as autunite. In 1925 Porlezza won the competition for the Chair of General Chemistry at the Livorno Naval Academy, and subsequently that of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Cagliari, going on to obtain the Chair of General Chemistry at the University of Pisa in 1929, to which was to be added, in 1935, the teaching of Physical Chemistry at the same university. After going to teach Physical Chemistry and Higher Chemistry at the University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil from 1939 to 1942, he resumed his courses in Pisa until his retirement in 1960. Testifying to his scientific activity in the field of chemistry are over 100 works published from the early years of the 20 th century through the mid-century point, noteworthy among which are numerous chemical/physical studies of Italian thermal waters and important contributions to the spectrographic analysis of minerals and rocks.