Artom was ready for the university when he was sixteen; but as Piedmont higher schools excluded Jews at the time, he went to Pisa in 1846, to study law at the University of Pisa. When the Revolution of 1848 broke out, he joined the students' battalion under Professor Giuseppe Montanelli (despite his frail constitution) and participated in the Battle of Curtatone and Montanara. He resumed his law studies after the war, and graduated from the University of Turin in 1853.
