Italian Winners of Nobel Prize, Pritzker Prize, and
Fields Medal

The Nobel Prize

Giosuè Carducci - Nobel Prize in Literature – 1906
Camillo Golgi - Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine – 1906
Ernesto Teodoro Moneta - Nobel Peace Prize – 1907
Guglielmo Marconi  - Nobel Prize in Physics – 1909
Grazia Deledda - Nobel Prize in Literature – 1926
Luigi Pirandello - Nobel Prize in Literature – 1934
Enrico Fermi  - Nobel Prize in Physics – 1938
Salvatore Quasimodo - Nobel Prize in Literature – 1959
Emilio Segrè  - Nobel Prize in Physics – 1959
Giulio Natta - Nobel Prize in Chemistry – 1963
Salvador E. Luria - Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine - 1969
Eugenio Montale - Nobel Prize in Literature – 1975
Renato Dulbecco - Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine – 1975
Carlo Rubbia  - Nobel Prize in Physics – 1984
Franco Modigliani - Nobel Prize in Economics – 1985
Rita Levi-Montalcini - Nobel Prize in Medicine –1986
William D. Phillips - Nobel Prize in Physics – 1997
Dario Fò - Nobel Prize in Literature – 1997
Riccardo Giacconi - Nobel Prize in Physics – 2002

The Pritzker Prize in Architecture

Aldo Rossi - Pritzker Prize 1990
Robert Venturi - Pritzker Prize 1991
Renzo Piano - Pritzker Prize 1998

The Fields Medal in Mathematics

Enrico Bombieri - Fields Medal 1974

Giosuè Carducci(1835-1907) Nobel Prize in Literature 1906

"not only in consideration of his deep learning and critical research, but above all as a tribute to the creative energy, freshness of style, and lyrical force which characterize his poetic masterpieces" 

Giosuè Carducci was born in Val di Castello, a small town near Pisa. He was early attracted to the Greek and Roman authors; in addition, he conscientiously studied the
Italian classics: Dante, Tasso, and Alfieri. At the age of twenty he graduated with a degree in philosophy and letters from the University of Pisa. After several difficult years in which he taught in various high schools, he was appointed to the chair of Italian Literature at the University of Bologna, a post that he held until his retirement in 1904.  Inspired both by his own time as well as by his study of the classical and Italian poets, Carducci began writing poetry when he was a child. The first two collections of his poetry were Rime (1857) [Rhymes ] and Levia Gravia (1868) [Light and Heavy ]. Both reveal his enthusiasm for and imitation of the ancients as well as a strong revolutionary tendency. Inno a Satana (1865) [Hymn to Satan ], for which Carducci was considered to be a «notorious praiser of Satan», is the full expression of his free thought and of modern ideas, inventions, and revolutions. Giambi ed epodi (1882) [Iambics and Epodes ], a collection of satiric poems of a political nature, expresses Carducci's indignation with his compatriots. In the Nuove poesie (1873) [New Poems ] end the three collections of Odi barbare (1877, 1882, and 1889) [The Barbarian Odes ], his poetic forms reach perfection.
Carducci was also an excellent translator, and the lyrics of Goethe and Heine greatly influenced the development of his own poetry.
In addition to his fame as a poet he was a noted literary historian and an eminent orator. He conducted research in every phase of literature and eloquently expressed his findings in Studi letterati (1874) [Literary Studies ], Bozetti critici e discorsi letterari (1876) [Critical Sketches and Literary Discussigns], and many other works.

Carducci, moreover, led an active political life. After having been named an honorary citizen of Bologna, he was elected to the Senate in 1890; heserved as deputy in the House of Representatives for a short time. Carducci's poetry inspired his compatriots in the war for Italian independence, and he enjoyed an immense popularity both at home and abroad. Having manifested a scholarly and dynamic personality in all his endeavours, he stands as the greatest Italian literary figure in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Grazia Deledda (1875-1936) Nobel in Literature 1926"for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general"

I was born in the little town of Nuoro in Sardinia in 18711. My father was a fairly well-to-do landowner who farmed his own land. He was also a hospitable man and had friends in all of the towns surrounding Nuoro. When these friends and their families had to come to Nuoro on business or for religious holidays, they usually stayed at our house. Thus I began to know the various characters of my novels. I went only to elementary school in Nuoro. After this, I took private lessons in Italian from an elementary school teacher. He gave me themes to write about, and some of them turned out so well that he told me to publish them in a newspaper. I was thirteen and I didn't know to whom I should go to have my stories published. But I came across a fashion magazine. I took the address and sent off a short story. It was immediately published. Then I wrote my first novel, Fior di Sardegna (1892) [Flower of Sardinia], which I sent to an editor in Rome. He published it, and it was quite successful. But my first real success was Elias Portolú (1903), which was first translated by the Revue des deux mondes, and then into all of the European languages. I have written a great deal:

Novels: Anime oneste, romanzo famigliare (1895) [Honest Souls], with preface by Ruggero Bonghi; Il vecchio della montagna (1900) [The Old Man of the Mountain] followed by a dramatic sketch Odio vince(1904) [HateWins] ; Elias Portolú (1903); Cenere (1904) [Ashes]; Nostalgie (1905); La via del male (1896) [The Evil Way]; Naufraghi in porto [originally Dopo il divorzio, 1902] (1920) [After the Divorce]; L'edera (1908) [The Ivy]; Il nostro padrone (1910) [Our Master]; Sino al confine (1910) [Up to the Limit]; Nel deserto (1911) [In the Desertl; Colombi e sparvieri (1912) [Doves and Falcons]; Canne al vento (1913) [Canes in the Wind]; Le colpe altrui (1914) [The Others' Faults]; Marianna Sirca (1915); L'incendio nell'oliveto (1918) [The Fire in the Olive Grove]; La Madre (1920) [The Mother]; Il segreto dell'uomo solitario(1921) [The Secret ofthe Solitary Man]; Il Dio dei viventi (1922) [The God of the Living]; La danza della collana (1924) [The Dance of the Necklace], followed by the dramatic sketch A sinistra (1924) [To the Left]; La fuga in Egitto (1925) [The Flight into Egypt]; Annalena Bilsini (1927).

Short Stories: «I giuochi della vita» (1905) [The Gambles in Life]; «Chiaroscuro» (1912) [Light and Dark]; «Il fanciullo nascosto» (1915) [The Hidden Boy]; «Il ritorno del figlio» (1919) [The Son's Return]; «La bambina rubata» (1919) [The Stolen Child]; «Cattive com pagnie» (1921) [Evil Company]; «Il flauto nel bosco» (1923) [The Flute in the Wood]; «Il sigillo d'amore» (1926) [The Seal of Love]. L'edera (1912) [The Ivy], a play in three acts, with the collaboration of Camillo Antona-Traversi.

In 1900 I took my first trip. It was to Cagliari, the beautiful Sardinian capital. There I met my husband. We later moved to Rome, where I am presently living. I have also written some poems which have not been collected in a volume.

Biographical note on Grazia Deledda

Grazia Deledda continued to write extensively after she received the Nobel Prize. La casa del poeta (1930) [The Poet's House] and Sole d'estate (1933) [Summer Sun], both collections of short stories, reflect her optimistic vision of life even during the most painful years of her incurable illness. Life remains beautiful and serene, unaltered by personal suffering; man and nature are reconciled in order to overcome physical and spiritual hardship.

In many of her later works, Grazia Deledda combined the imaginary and the autobiographical; this blend is readily apparent in her novel, Il paese del vento (1931) [Land of the Wind]. In another novel, L'argine (1934) [The Barrier], the renunciation of worldly things, including love, mirrors the life of the author who, accepting self-sacrifice as a higher manner of living, is reconciled with God. The common trait of all her later writings is a constant faith in mankind and in God.

Two of Grazia Deledda's novels were published posthumously: Cosima (1937) and Il cedro di Libano (1939) [The Cedar of Lebanon].

Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) Nobel in Literature 1934

"for his bold and ingenious revival of dramatic and scenic art"

Luigi Pirandello was born in Girgenti, Sicily. But to be more specific he saw the frst light of day in an area of Sicily called, in dialect, "Càvusu", that is Chaos. Pirandello in fact will say: "Io sono figlio del Caos e non
allegoricamente, ma in giusta realtà" [I am the child of chaos and not allegorically, but in actual reality] (Fragment from his autobiography, 1893). He studied philology at Rome and at Bonn, Germany and wrote a dissertation on the dialect of his native town (1891). From 1897 to 1922 he was professor of aesthetics and stylistics at the Real Istituto di Magistero Femminile in Rome. Pirandello's work is impressive by its sheer volume. He wrote a great number of novellas which were collected under the title Novelle per un anno (15 vols., 1922-37). Of his six novels the best known are Il fu Mattia Pascal (1904) [The Late Mattia Pascal], I vecchi e i giovani (1913) [The Old and the Young], Si gira (1916) | [Shoot!], and Uno, nessuno e centomila (1926) [One, None, and a Hundred thousand].

But Pirandello's greatest achievement is in his plays. He wrote a large number of dramas which were published, between 1918 and 1935, under the collective title of Maschere nude [Naked Masks]. The title is programmatic Pirandello is always preoccupied with the problem of identity. The self exists to him only in relation to others; it consists of changing facets that hide an inscrutable abyss. In a play like Cosí é (se vi pare) (1918) [Right You Are (If You Think You Are)], two people hold contradictory notions about the identity of a third person. The protagonist in Vestire gli ignudi (1923) [To Clothe the Naked] tries to establish her individuality by assuming various identities, which are successively stripped from her; she gradually realizes her true position in the social order and in the end dies «naked», without a social mask, in both her own and her friends' eyes. Similarly in Enrico IV (1922) [Henry IV] a man supposedly mad imagines that he is a medieval emperor, and his imagination and reality are strangely confused. The conflict between illusion and reality is central in La vita che ti diedi (1924) [The Life I Gave You] in which Anna's long-lost son returns home and contradicts her mental conception of him. However, his death resolves Anna's conflict; she clings to illusion rather than to reality. The analysis and dissolution of a unified self are carried to an extreme in Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore (1921) [Six Characters in Search of An Author] where the stage itself, the symbol of appearance versus reality,becomes the setting of the play.

The attitudes expressed in L'Umorismo [Humour], an early essay (1908), are fundamental to all of Pirandello's plays. His characters attempt to fulfil their self-seeking roles and are defeated by life itself which, always changing, enables them to see their perversity. This is Pirandello's humour, an irony which arises from the contradictions inherent in life. More in Italian see Pirandello.

Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968) Nobel in Literature 1959

"for his lyrical poetry, which with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our own times"

Salvatore Quasimodo was born in Syracuse, Sicily. Desiring to become an engineer, he attended technical schools in Palermo and later enrolled at the Politecnico in Rome. In addition, he studied Latin and Greek at the University there. However, for economic reasons he was unable to complete his studies. He obtained a position with the Italian government's civil engineering corps and was sent to various parts of Italy. In 1930 he had three poems published in the avant-garde review, Solaria, and later that same year appeared his first book of verse, Acque e terre (Waters and Lands). Two years later he published Òboe sommerso (Sunken Oboe), in which he proves a more mature poet. The "poetica della parole", the poetics of the word, which is, for Quasimodo, the fundamental and virtually limitless connotative unit, pervades his first book. While this concept still serves as the basis for Òboe sommerso, the main interest of this collection lies in the rhythmical arrangement of words around a lyrical nucleus. In both these and his later works Sicily is the constant, ever-present factor.

Between 1930 and 1938, the year he left his government position, he made the acquaintance of many prominent Italian authors and painters. In 1938 he became editor of the weekly magazine, Tempo, and three years later was appointed to the chair of Italian Literature at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan.

During the 1930's Quasimodo was a leader of the "Hermetic" school of poetry; however, with the appearance of his translations Lirici Greci (Greek Lyrics), 1940, it was obvious that his direction was no longer entirely along the lines of that group. In Nuove Poesie (New Poems), 1942, Quasimodo reveals both the influence of classical stylistics and a greater understanding of life in general. His subsequent translations, which range from the Greek and Latin poets (Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, Ovid, Vergil, etc.) to Shakespeare and Molière and twentieth-century writers (Neruda, e.e. cummings, Aiken, etc.), reflect his full appreciation of the original works as well as his modern taste and sensibility.

During the Second World War Quasimodo experienced the need of the poet to feel one with the people and to declare himself as such in his poems. To him the role of the poet in society is a neccessarily active one; he should commit himself and his talents to contemporary struggles. Such views were first expressed in Giorno dopogiorno (Day after Day), 1946, and La vita non è sogno (Life Is Not a Dream), 1949.

Quasimodo's later works show this change from individualism toward sociality, and moreover affirm the positive characteristics of life even in a world where death is an omnipresent fear. In La terra impareggiabile (The Incomparable Earth), 1958, Quasimodo has eloquently attempted to fuse life andliterature; he has developed a new language which coincides with man's new activities and ever-expanding investigations. Some of

his poetry and two of his critical essays have appeared in English translation in The SelectedWritings of Salvatore Quasimodo (1960); his Selected Poems were published in 1965.

The recipient of many literary prizes - in 1953, for instance, together with Dylan Thomas, he was awarded the Etna-Taormina International Prize in Poetry - Quasimodo died in Naples on June I4, 1968. 

Eugenio Montale (1896-1981) Nobel Prize in Literature 1975
"for his distinctive poetry which, with great artistic sensitivity, has interpreted human values under the sign of an outlook on life with no illusions" 

Eugenio Montale, born in 1896, is one of the few obvious "true masters" of the last fifty years of Italian literature. Born in Genoa into a family of businessmen, he discontinued his secondary studies and started, on a private basis, to study singing with the baritone Ernesto Sivori. But the 1915-18 war (in which he served as an infantry officer), the death of Sivori and his decision to go in for a literary career, turned Montale away from that course, in which he had shown an extraordinary interest in melodrama, even its technical aspects. When he started to devote himself poetry, he was already in possession of a rich and versatile culture and a taste for Bellini's and Debussy's music, impressionist painting and the art of the great novelists of nineteenth-century Europe, at the same time sharing the interests of the Ligurian poets Roccatagliata-Cecardi, Boine and Sbarbaro. However, the "regional" outlook of poetry of his time was not allowed to limit the critical attention that he paid to Leopardi and Foscolo. It was not until after the war that the poet dedicated himself fully to creative activities and literature. In 1921, he contributed to "Primo Tempo", with Solmi and Debenedetti, revealing, besides his poetic gifts, a rare critical talent through his acuteness and independence of conventional patterns. His Omaggio a Svevo, published in 1925 in the Milanese "L'Esame", aroused much attention, determining, among other things, the fortune of the works of the Triestine writer.

Montale settled down in Florence in 1928, where he became director of the Gabinetto Vieusseux library. He was one of the first inspirers of "Solaria", always being one of the most active and politically non-conformist Florentine intellectuals until, in 1938, refusing to join the party then in power, he was dismissed from his directorship at the Gabinetto Vieusseux.

In 1925, he published his first collection of poems, Ossi di seppia, which quickly became one of the "classics" of contemporary Italian poetry; in his verses, sentiment appears desiccated by a severe intellectual rigour, evoked with intimate fullness in the fervid and striking sights of the Mediterranean landscape. Some critics aptly saw in Ossi di seppia a singular introspective continuity, as in a great modern novel, linked to the story of the protagonist, finding its most developed form in the poem "Arsenio".

When Le occasioni (1939) was published, it brought consistent confirmation of this inner line of development which, bearing a new classical-modern imprint, identified itself with the great contemporary metaphysical poetry. In Le occasioni, Italian poetry and culture as a whole were, from then on, to recognise a book that reflected the solitude and the agony over the human condition of one who lucidly opposed Fascist oppression, creating a song of noble stoicism.

Montale's biography is a chronicle of poetry. The Second World War saw the publication, in 1943, of Finisterre, a collection which, published in Lugano in two successive editions of modest print runs, constituted one of the cornerstones of the volume La bufera e altro, a consistent continuation of his whole work, printed in 1956. La farfalla di Dinard - which from the ninety-six pages of the 1956 edition was expanded, from one edition to another, into the 273 pages of the 1960 edition - showed Montale to be an original writer of autobiography and imaginative prose, almost a narrator, with malicious flashes of wit but with an elegiac spirit.

In 1961, Montale was awarded an honorary degree at the University of Rome and shortly afterwards, at the universities of Milan, Cambridge, and Basel. In 1967, President Saragat appointed him senator for life "in recognition of his distinguished achievements in the literary and artistic fields". This event relieved him, in a sense, of the obligation to go every day to the editorial office of the "Corriere della Sera", where he had been working as a music critic, editor and special correspondent since 1948. The following works, prose as well as poetry, confirmed the vitality of a writer who, true to the fundamental themes of his early career (the Universe marked by inevitable failure and pain as an existential stigma), managed to collect experiences and important moments from the spiritual transformations of our times. Auto da fé (1966 and 1972), Fuori di casa (1969 and 1975) and Quaderno di tradazioni (1948 and 1975) are books that give an idea of the vastness of his interests and of the versatility of his talent, later confirmed by La bufera e altro (1970).

In 1971, Mondadori published his fourth collection of poetry, Satura, which soon became a bestseller. The book, exhibiting the usual linguistic ambiguity typical of Montale, alludes to a poetry that disrupts its own and others' patterns, including existential themes about man still in some way Christian and Western, a subtle and provocative humor in the face of a world that changes and proceeds along its tragic and mysterious route.

Montale's great poetry, in actual fact, is born out of the search for those presences that reveal and liberate the hidden world, such as spectres and amulets. Not insusceptible to the stylistic lessons of Pascoli and Gozzano, nor to contemporaries writing in English, Montale has in his turn influenced younger Italian poets, even post-Ermetismo poets and experimentators.

After a volume of cultural articles, La farfalla di Dinard, he published in 1973, still with Mondadori, Diario 1971-72, which contains more recent lyric poems, born of a moral meditation not very different from that which brought forth the poems of Satura.

Attentive to the effects of history, Montale's poetry stands out as congenial to spirits that are aware of the consequences (of which, from many aspects, we have not yet seen the end) of the second world tragedy, which the writer saw as temporary reflections of an evil without origin and without end, according to a parable which makes him belong to the more conscious part of the European intellect.

Dario Fò (1926 - ) Nobel Prize in Literature 1997
"who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden"

Dario Fò was born on 26 March 1926 in San Giano, a small town on Lago Maggiore in the province of Varese. His family consisted of: his father Felice, socialist, station master and actor in an amateur theatre company; his mother Pina Rota, a woman of great imagination and talent (in the 1970s her autobiographical account "Il paese delle rane", telling the history of her home town, was published by Einaudi); his brother Fulvio and

his sister Bianca; and his maternal grandfather, who had a farm in Lomellina, where young Dario spent his childhood vacations.

During Dario's visits, his grandfather would travel around the countryside selling his produce from a big, horse-drawn wagon. To attract customers

he would tell the most amazing stories, and in these stories he would insert news and anecdotes about local events. His satirical and timely chronicles earned him the nickname Bristìn (pepper seed). It was from his grandfather, sitting beside him on the big wagon, that Dario began to learn the rudiments of narrative rhythm.

Dario spent his childhood moving from one town to another, as his father's postings were changed at the whim of the railway authorities. But even though the geography remained in a flux, the cultural setting was always the same. As the boy grew, he became schooled in the local narrative tradition. With growing passion, he would sit in the taverns or the piazze and listen tirelessly to the master glass-blowers and fishermen, who – in the oral tradition of the fabulatore - would swap tall tales, steeped in pungent political satire.

In 1940 he moved to Milan (commuting from Luino) to study at the Brera Art Academy. After the war, he begins to study architecture at the Polytechnic, but interrupts his studies with only a few exams left to complete his degree.

Towards the end of the war, Dario is conscripted into the army of the Salo republic. He manages to escape, and spends the last months of the war hidden in an attic store room. His parents are active in the resistance, his father organizing the smuggling of Jewish scientists and escaped British prisoners of war into Switzerland by train; his mother caring for wounded partisans.

At the end of the war, Dario returns to his studies at the Academy of Brera in Milan while attending courses in architecture at the Polytechnic, commuting each day from his home on Lago Maggiore. 1945-41 he turns his attention to stage design and theatre décor. He begins to improvise monologues.

He moves with his family to Milan. Mamma Fo, in order to help her husband put the three children through college, does her best as a shirt-maker. For the younger Fos, this is a period of ravenous reading. Gramsci and Marx are devoured along with American novelists and the first translations of Brecht, Mayakovsky and Lorca.

In the immediate postwar years, Italian theatre undergoes a veritable revolution, pushed along mainly by the new phenomenon of piccoli teatri ["small theatres"] that play a key role in developing the idea of a "popular stage".

Fo is captured by this effervescent movement and proves to be an insatiable theatregoer - even though he usually can't afford to buy a seat and has to stand through the performances. Mamma Fo keeps an open mind and an open house for her children's new acquaintances, among them Emilio Tadini, Alik Cavalieri, Piccoli, Vittorini, Morlotti, Treccani, Crepax, some of them already famous.

During his architecture studies, while working as decorator and assistant architect, Dario begins to entertain his friends with tales as tall as those he heard in the lakeside taverns of his childhood.

In the summer of 1950, Dario seeks out Franco Parenti who is enthralled by the young man's comical rendering of the parable of Cain and Abel, a satire in which Cain, poer nano ["poor little thing"], a miserable fool, is anything but evil. It's just that every time he tries, poer nano,to mimic the splendid, blond and blue-eyed Abel, he gets into trouble. After suffering one disaster after another, he finally goes crazy and kills the splendid

Abel. Franco Parenti enthusiastically invites Fo to join his theatre company.

Dario starts performing in Parenti's summer variety show. This is when he has his first "encounter" with Franca Rame - not in person, mind, but in the form of a photograph he sees at the home of some friends. He is thunderstruck!

For a while he continues to work as assistant architect. But he soon decides to abandon his work and studies, disgusted by the corruption already rampant in the building sector.

In addition to playwright, Dario Fo is also director, stage and costume designer, and on occasion he even composes the music for his plays.

France Rame, his leading actress, has assisted in and contributed to the writing of many of the plays they have produced in their 45 years of theatre together. She has also assumed the administrative and organizational responsibility for the Fo-Rame Company.

Franca Rame was born in Parabiago, a small town in the Province of Milan. That she happened to be born there was pure chance: her family was performing in the town at the time. Her father Domenico, her mother Emilia and her brother, along with aunts, uncles, cousins and other actors and actresses hired on contract, were all part travelling theatre troupe touring the towns and villages of Lombardy and Piedmont.

The Rame family's ties to the theatre are very old. Since the late 17th century, they have been actors, and puppet masters, as the occasion required.
With the arrival of the cinema they shifted from puppet theatre to real theatre, enriched with all the "special effects" of the puppet theatre. They travelled from town to town, and were well received wherever they went.

Even today, her personal success in theatre and television notwithstanding, people in these towns still often refer to Franca as "the daughter of Domenico Rame". In the best tradition of the Commedia dell'Arte, the family improvised its performances, drawing on a rich repertoire of tragic and comical situations and dialogues.

They often opened in a new town - following a poll among the townspeople - with an enactment of the life of the local patron saint.

The family's repertoire ranged from the biblical texts over Shakespeare to Chekhov and Pirandello; from Niccodemi to the great l9th century historical novels - especially those with a socialist or anticlerical bent. Often their performances included enactments of the lives of men such as Giordano Bruno, Arnaldo da Brescia and Galileo Galilei.

Domenico Rame was the troupe's poet; a devout socialist, he often saw to it that the revenue from a performance was given in support of striking workers or used to build child-care facilities, or in other ways spent to improve the lives of the common people. The minutely documented records of this activity, which remains in the Rame-Fo archives, was probably maintained by Franca's mother Emilia Baldini, a school teacher and daughter of a municipal engineer in Bobbio.

As a young school teacher, Emilia fell in love with Domenico - twenty years her senior - who was passing through Bobbio with his marionettes and puppets. She married him, against the strong wishes of her family, and together they continued to tour all of Lombardy. Emilia soon learned the trades of acting and costume designer. It was she who taught their four children to act and to move on the stage. She was an outstanding

woman, meticulous in all her work and an excellent organizer. In the end it was she who carried the troupe on her shoulders.

It was in this environment that Franca earned her apprenticeship. She has always felt at home on the stage because - as she says - "I was born there: I was only eight days old when I made my debut in my mother's arms [she played the new-born son of Geneviève of Brabant] ... I didn't say much that evening! "

Some years later, in the 1950-51 theatre season, Franca - following the lead of her sister Pia - left the family and joined the company of Tino Scotti for a part in Marcello Marchesi's "Ghe pensi mi" at the Teatro Olimpia in Milan.

Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) Nobel Prize in Physics 1909
[Awarded jointly to Carl Ferdinand Braun]

"in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy"

Guglielmo Marconi was born at Bologna, Italy, on April 25, 1874, the second son of Giuseppe Marconi, an Italian country gentleman, and Annie Jameson, daughter of Andrew Jameson of the Jameson Whiskey Distillery, Daphne Castle in the County Wexford, Ireland. He was educated privately at Bologna, Florence and Leghorn. Even as a boy he took a keen interest in physical and electrical science and studied the works of Maxwell, Hertz, Righi, Lodge and others. In 1895 he began laboratory experiments at his father's country estate at Pontecchio where he succeeded in sending wireless over a distance of one and a half miles, thus becoming the inventor of the first practical system of wireless telegraphy.

In 1896 Marconi took his apparatus to England where he was introduced to Mr. (later Sir) William Preece, Engineer-in-Chief of the Post Office, and later that year was granted the world's first patent for a system of telegraphy. He demonstrated his system successfully in London, on Salisbury Plain and across the Bristol Channel, and in July 1897 formed The Wireless Telegraph& Signal Company Limited (in 1900 re-named Marconi's Wireless

Telegraph Company Limited). In the same year he gave a demonstration to the Italian Government at Spezia where wireless signals were sent over a distance of twelve miles. In 1899 he established wireless communication between France and England across the English Channel. He erected permanent wireless stations at The Needles, Isle of Wight, at Bournemouth and later at the Haven Hotel, Poole, Dorset.

In 1900 he took out his famous patent No. 7777 for "tuned or syntonic telegraphy" and, on an historic day in December 1901, determined to prove that wireless waves were not affected by the curvature of the Earth, he used his system for transmitting the first wireless signals across the Atlantic between Poldhu, Cornwall, and St. John's, Newfoundland, a distance of 2100 miles.

Between 1902 and 1912 he patented several new inventions. In 1902, during a voyage in the American liner "Philadelphia", he first demonstrated "daylight effect" relative to wireless communication and in the same year patented his magnetic detector which then became the standard wireless receiver for many years. In December 1902 he transmitted the first complete messages to Poldhu from stations at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, and later Cape Cod, Massachusetts, these early tests culminating in 1907 in the opening of the first transatlantic commercial service between Glace Bay and Clifden, Ireland, after the first shorter-distance public service of wireless telegraphy had been established between Bari in Italy and Avidari in Montenegro. In 1905 he patented his horizontal directional aerial and in 1912 a "timed spark" system for generating continuous waves.

In 1914 he was commissioned in the Italian Army as a Lieutenant being later promoted to Captain, and in 1916 transferred to the Navy in the rank of Commander. He was a member of the Italian Government mission to the United States in 1917 and in 1919 was appointed Italian plenipotentiary delegate to the Paris Peace Conference. He was awarded the Italian Military Medal in 1919 in recognition of his war service.

During his war service in Italy he returned to his investigation of short waves, which he had used in his first experiments. After further tests by his collaborators in England, an intensive series of trials was conducted in 1923 between experimental installations at the Poldhu Station and in Marconi's yacht "Elettra" cruising in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and this led to the establishment of the beam system for long distance communication. Proposals to use this system as a means of Imperial communications were accepted by the British Government and the first beam station, linking England and Canada, was opened in 1926, other stations being added the following year.

In 1931 Marconi began research into the propagation characteristics of still shorter waves, resulting in the opening in 1932 of the world's first microwave radiotelephone link between the Vatican City and the Pope's summer residence at Castel Gandolfo. Two years later at Sestri Levante he demonstrated his microwave radio beacon for ship navigation and in 1935, again in Italy, gave a practical demonstration of the principles of radar, the coming of which he had first foretold in a lecture to the American Institute of Radio Engineers in New York in 1922.

He has been the recipient of honorary doctorates of several universities and many other international honours and awards, among them the Nobel Prize for Physics, which in 1909 he shared with Professor Carl Braun, the Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts, the John Fritz Medal and the Kelvin Medal. He was decorated by the Tsar of Russia with the Order of St. Anne, the King of Italy created him Commander of the Order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus, and awarded him the Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy in 1902. Marconi also received the freedom of the City of Rome (1903), and was created Chevalier of the Civil Order of Savoy in 1905. Many other distinctions of this kind followed. In 1914 he was both created a Senatore in the Italian Senate and app ointed Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order in England. He received the hereditary title of Marchese in 1929.

In 1905 he married the Hon. Beatrice O'Brien, daughter of the 14th Baron Inchiquin, the marriage being annulled in 1927, in which year he married the Countess Bezzi-Scali of Rome. He had one son and two daughters by his first and one daughter by his second wife. His recreations were hunting, cycling and motoring. Marconi died in Rome on July 20, 1937.

Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) Nobel prize for Physiscs 1938
"for his demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons"

Enrico Fermi was born in Rome on 29th September, 1901, the son of Alberto Fermi, a Chief Inspector of the Ministry of Communications, and Ida de Gattis. He attended a local grammar school, and his early aptitude for mathematics and physics was recognized and encouraged by his father's colleagues, among whom A.Amidei. In 1918, he won a fellowship of the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. He spent four years at the University of Pisa, gaining his doctor's degree in physics in 1922, with Professor Puccianti.

Soon afterwards, in 1923, he was awarded a scholarship from the Italian Government and spent some months with Professor Max Born in Göttingen. With a Rockefeller Fellowship, in 1924, he moved to Leyden to work with P. Ehrenfest, and later that same year he returned to Italy to occupy for two years (1924-1926) the post of Lecturer in Mathematical Physics and Mechanics at the University of Florence.

In 1926, Fermi discovered the statistical laws, nowadays known as the «Fermi statistics», governing the particles subject to Pauli's exclusion principle (now referred to as «fermions», in contrast with «bosons» which obey the Bose-Einstein statistics).

In 1927, Fermi was elected Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Rome (a post which he retained until 1938, when he - immediately after the receipt of the Nobel Prize - emigrated to America, primarily to escape Mussolini's fascist dictatorship).

During the early years of his career in Rome he occupied himself with electrodynamic problems and with theoretical investigations on various spectroscopic phenomena. But a capital turning-point came when he directed his attention from the outer electrons towards the atomic nucleus itself. In 1934, he evolved the ß-dccay theory, coalescing previous work on radiation theory with Pauli's idea of the neutrino. Following the discovery by Curie and Joliot of artificial radioactivity (1934), he demonstrated that nuclear transformation occurs in almost every element subjected to neutron bombardment. This work resulted in the discovery of slow neutrons that same year, leading to the discovery of nuclear fission and the production of elements lying beyond what was until then the Periodic Table.

In 1938, Fermi was without doubt the greatest expert on neutrons, and he continued his work on this topic on his arrival in the United States, where he was soon appointed Professor of Physics at Columbia University, N.Y. ( 1939 - I942).

Upon the discovery of fission, by Hahn and Strassmann early in 1939, he immediately saw the possibility of emission of secondary neutrons and of a chain reaction. He proceeded to work with tremendous enthusiasm, and directed a classical series of experiments which ultimately led to the atomic pile and the first controlled nuclear chain reaction. This took place in Chicago on December 2, 1942 - on a volley-ball field situated

beneath Chicago's stadium. He subsequently played an important part in solving the problems connected with the development of the first atomic bomb (He was one of the leaders of the team of physicists on the Manhattan Project for the development of nuclear energy and the atomic bomb.)

In 1944, Fermi became American citizen, and at the end of the war (1946) he accepted a professorship at the Institute for Nuclear Studies of the University of Chicago, a position which he held until his untimely death in 1954. There he turned his attention to high-energy physics, and led investigations into the pion-nucleon interaction.

During the last years of his life Fermi occupied himself with the problem of the mysterious origin of cosmic rays, thereby developing a theory, according to which a universal magnetic field - acting as a giant accelerator - would account for the fantastic energies present in the cosmic ray particles.

Professor Fermi was the author of numerous papers both in theoretical and experimental physics. His most important contributions were: "Sulla quantizzazione del gas perfetto monoatomico", Rend. Accad. Naz. Lincei, 1935 (also in Z. Phys., 1936), concerning the foundations of the statistics of the electronic gas and of the gases made of particles that obey the Pauli Principle.

Several papers published in Rend. Accad. Naz. Lincei, 1927-28, deal with the statistical model of the atom (Thomas-Fermi atom model) and give a semiquantitative method for the calculation of atomic properties. A resumé of this work was published by Fermi in the volume: Quantentheorie und Chemie, edited by H. Falkenhagen, Leipzig, 1928. "Uber die magnetischen Momente der AtomLerne", Z. Phys., 1930, is a quantitative theory of the hyperfine structures of spectrum lines. The magnetic moments of some nuclei are deduced therefrom. "Tentativo di una teoria dei raggi ß", Ricerca Scientifica, 1933 (also Z. Phys., 1934) proposes a theory of the emission of ß-rays, based on the hypothesis, first proposed by Pauli, of the existence of the neutrino.

The Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Fermi for his work on the artificial radioactivity produced by neutrons, and for nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons. The first paper on this subject "Radioattività indotta dal bombardamento di neutroni" was published by him in Ricerca Scientifica, 1934. All the work is collected in the following papers by himself and various collaborators: "Artificial radioactivity produced by neutron bombardment", Proc. Roy. Soc., 1934 and 1935; "On the absorption and diffusion of slow neutrons", Phys. Rev., 1936. The theoretical problems colmected with the neutron are discussed by Fermi in the paper "Sul moto dei neutroni lenti", Ricerca Scientifica, 1936.

His Collected Papers are being published by a Committee under the Chairmanship of his friend and former pupil, Professor E. Segrè (Nobel Prize winner 1959, with O. Chamberlain, for the discovery of the antiproton).

Fermi was member of several academies and learned societies in Italy and abroad (he was early in his career, in 1929, chosen among the first 30 members of the Royal Academy of Italy).

As lecturer he was always in great demand (he has also given several courses at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and Stanford University, Calif.). He was the first recipient of a special award of $50,000 - which now bears his name - for work on the atom.

Professor Fermi married Laura Capon in 1928. They had one son Giulio and one daughter Nella. His favourite pastimes were walking, mountaineering, and winter sports.

He died in Chicago on 29th November, 1954.

Emilio Segrè (1905-1989) Nobel Prize in Physics 1959
[Awarded jointly to Owen Chamberlain]

"for their discovery of the antiproton"

Emilio Segrè was born in Tivoli, Rome, on February 1st, 1905, as the son of Giuseppe Segrè, industrialist, and Amelia Treves. He went to school in Tivoli and Rome, and entered the University of Rome as a student of engineering in 1922. In 1927 he changed over to physics and took his doctor's degree in 1928 under Professor Enrico Fermi, the first one tmder the latter's sponsorship.

He served in the Italian Army in 1928 and 1929, and entered the University of Rome as assistant to Professor Corbino in 1929. In 1930 he had a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship and worked with Professor Otto Stern at Hamburg, Germany, and Professor Pieter Zeeman at Amsterdam, Holland. In 1932 he returned to Italy and was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Rome, working continuously with Professor Fermi and others. In 1936 he was appointed Director of the Physics Laboratory at the University of Palermo, where he remained until I938.

In 1938 Professor Segrè came to Berkeley, California, first as a research associate in the Radiation Laboratory and later as a lecturer in the Physics Department. >From 1943 to 1946 he was a group leader in the Los Alamos Laboratory of the Manhattan Project. In 1946 he returned to the University of California at Berkeley as a Professor of Physics, and still occupies that position.

The work of Professor Segrè has been mainly in atomic and nuclear physics. In the first field he worked in atomic spectroscopy, making contributions to the spectroscopy of forbidden lines and the study of the Zeeman effect. Except for a short interlude on molecular beams, all his work until 1934 was in atomic spectroscopy. In 1934 he started the work in nuclear physics by collaborating with Professor Fermi on neutron research. He participated in the discovery of slow neutrons and in the pioneer neutron work carried on in Rome 1934-1935. Later he was interested in radiochemistry and discovered together with Professor Perrier the element technetium, together with Corson and Mackenzie the element astatine, and together with Kennedy, Seaborg, and Wahl, plutonium-239 and its fission properties.

His other investigations in nuclear physics cover many subjects, e.g., isomerism, spontaneous fission, and lately high-energy physics. Here he, his associates and students have made contributions to the study of the interaction between nucleons and on the related polarization phenomena. In 1955 together with Chamberlain, Wiegand, and Ypsilantis he discovered the antiproton. The study of antinucleons is now his major subject of research.

Professor Segrè has taught in temporary appointments at Columbia University, New York, at the University of Illinois, at the University of Rio de Janeiro and in several other institutions. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (U.S.A), of the Academy of Sciences at Heidelberg (Germany), of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei of Italy, and of other learned societies. He has received the HoEmann Medal of the German Chemical Society and the Cannizzaro Medal of the Italian Accademia dei Lincei. He is an Honorary Professor of San Marcos University in Peru and has an honorary doctor's degree of the University of Palermo, Italy.

Professor Segrè was married to Elfriede Spiro; they have a son, Claudio, and two daughters, Amelia and Fausta.

Carlo Rubbia (1934 - ) Nobel Prize in Physics 1984

[Awarded jointly with Simon Van Der Meer]

"for their decisive contributions to the large project, which led to the discovery of the field particles W and Z, communicators of weak interaction"

(Rubbia-R)  I was born in the small town of Gorizia, Italy, on 31 March, 1934. My father was an electrical engineer at the local telephone company and my mother an elementary school teacher. At the end of the World War II most of the province of Gorizia was overtaken by Yugoslavia and my family fled to Venice first and then to Udine.

As a boy, I was deeply interested in scientific ideas, electrical and mechanical, and I read almost everything I could find on the subject. I was attracted more by the hardware and construction aspects than by the scientific issues. At that time I could not decide if science or technology were more relevant for me.

After completing High School, I applied to the Faculty of Physics at the rather exclusive Scuola Normale in Pisa. My previous education had been seriously affected by the disasters of the war and the subsequent unrest. I badly failed the admission tests and my application was turned down. I forgot about physics and I started engineering at the University of Milan (Politecnico). To my great surprise and joy a few months later I was offered the possiblity of entering the Scuola Normale. One of the people who had won the admission contest had resigned! I am this apparently insignificant fact since it has determined and almost completely by accident my career of physicist. I moved to Pisa, where I completed the University education with at thesis on cosmic ray experiments. They have been very tough years, since I had to greatly improve my education, which was very deficient in a number of fundamental disciplines. At that time I also participated under my thesis advisor Marcello Conversi to new nstrumentation developments and to the realization of the first pulsed gas particle detectors.

Soon after my degree, in 1958 I went to the United States to enlarge my experience and to familiarize myself with particle accelerators. I spent about one and a half years at Columbia University. Together with W. Baker, we measured at the Nevis Syncro-cyclotron the angular assymmetry in the capture of polarized muons, demonstrating the presence of parity violation in this fundamental process. This was his first of a long serie of experiments on Weak Interactions, which ever since has become my main field of interest. Of course at that time it would have been quite unthinkable for me to imagine to be one day amongst the people discovering the quanta of the weak field!

Around 1960 I moved back to Europe, attracted by the newly founded European Organization for Nuclear Research, where for the first time the idea of a joint European effort in a field of pure Science was to be tried in practice. The Syncro-cyclotron at CERN had a performance significantly superior to the one of the machine in Nevis and we succeeded in a number of very exciting experiments on the structure of weak interactions, amongst which I would like to mention the discovery of the beta decay process of the positive pion, pi+ = pi0 + e + v and the first observation of the muon capture by free hydrogen, µ-+ p = n + v.

In the early sixties John Adams brought to operation the CERN Proton Syncrotron. I moved to the larger machine where I continued to do some weak interaction experiments, like for instance the determination of the parity violation in the beta decay of the lambda hyperon.

During the Summer of 1964 Fitch and Cronin announced the discovery of CP violation. This has been for me a tremendously important result and I abandoned all current work to start a long series of observations on CP violation in K0 decay and on the KL-KS mass difference. Unfortunately the subject did not turn out to be as prolific as in the case of the previous discovery of parity violation and even today, some thirty years afterwards we do not know much more about the origin of CP-violation than right after the announcement of the discovery.

I returned again to more orthodox weak interactions a few years later, when together with David Cline and Alfred Mann we proposed a major neutrino experiment at the newly started US laboratory of Fermilab. The operational problems associated with a limping accelerator and a new laboratory made very difficult, albeit impossible for us during the Summer of 1973 to settle definitively the question of the existence of neutral currents in neutrino interactions, when competing with the much more avanced instrumentation of Gargamelle at CERN. Instead, about one year later we could cleanly observe the presence of all-muons events in neutrino interactions and to confirm in this way one of the crucial predictions of the GIM mechanism, hinting at the existence of charm, glamorously settled only few months later with the observation of the Psi/J particle.

In the meantime and under the impulse of Vicky Weisskopf a new, fascinating adventure had just started at CERN with a new type of colliding beams machine, the Intersecting Storage Rings, in which counter-rotating beams of protons collide against each other. This novel technique offered a much more efficient use of the accelerator energy than the traditional method of collisions against a fixed target. From the very first operation of this new type of accelerator, I have participated to a long series of experiments. They have been crucial to perfect the detection techniques with colliding beams of protons and antiprotons needed later on for the discovery of the Intermediate Bosons.

By that time it was quite clear that Unified Theories of the type SU(2) x U(1) had a very good chance of predicting the existence and the masses of the triplet of intermediate vector bosons. The problem of course was the one of finding a practical way of discovering them. To achieve energies high enough to create the intermediate vector bosons (roughly 100 times as heavy as the proton) together with David Cline and Peter McIntyre we proposed in 1976 a radically new approach. Along the lines discussed about ten years earlier by the Russian physicist Budker, we suggested to transform an existing high energy accelerator in a colliding beam device in which a beam of protons and of antiprotons, their antimatter twins, are counter-rotating and colliding head-on. To this effect we had to develop a number of techniques for creating antiprotons, confining them in a concentrated beam and colliding them with an intense proton beam. These techniques were developed at CERN with the help of many people and in particular of Guido Petrucci, Jacques Gareyte and Simon van der Meer.

In view of the size and of the complexity of the detector, physics experiments at the proton-antiproton collider have required rather unusual techniques. Equally unusual has been the number and variety of different talents needed to reach the goal of observing the W and Z particles. International cooperation between many people from very different countries has been proven to be a very successful way of acheiving such goals.

Additional biographical material avved in 1991: For eighteen years, I have dedicated one semester per year to teaching at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., where I have been appointed professor in 1970, spending the rest of my time mostly in Geneva, where I was conducting various experiments, especially the UA-1 Collaboration at the proton-antiproton collider until 1988. On 17 December 1987, the Council of CERN decided to appoint me Director-General of the Organization as from lst January 1989, for a mandate of five years. My wife, Marisa, teaches Physics at High School, and we have two children, a married daughter Laura, medical doctor, and a son, André, student in high energy physics.

William D. Phillips (1948 - ), Nobel Prize in Physics

[Prize was awarded jointly to Steven Chu, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji]

"for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light"

I was born on 5 November 1948 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, just across the river from the town of Kingston, where my parents lived with my one and a half year old sister, Maxine. My parents had come to this small Pennsylvania town from places and backgrounds that were far apart and yet quite similar.

My mother, Mary Catherine Savino (later, Savine), was born in the southern Italian village of Ripacandida in 1913. Among her earliest memories are riding into her grandfather's vineyards in a horse-drawn cart. Her father emigrated to the US and brought the family to Altoona, Pennsylvania in 1920. Her new American schoolmates teased her for her inability to speak English and taunted her as a "Wop" for her Italian heritage. She resolved to excel, and so she did, graduating near the top of her class from Altoona High School.

My father, William (Bill) Cornelius Phillips, was born in Juniata, a community on the edge of Altoona, in 1907. His father was a carpenter and his mother operated a boarding house to augment the family income. His grandfather was a barrel-maker, who would demonstrate the quality of his product by jumping onto the finished barrel in front of the customer. Dad could trace his heritage to ancestors from Wales who fought in the American Revolution.

My father and mother were each the first in their families to go to college, each attending Juniata College, a small school in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. This Italian Catholic young woman and this Welsh-American Methodist young man met, fell in love, got married, earned Masters degrees and became professional social workers in the hard coal country of Pennsylvania. I clearly remember the value my parents placed on reading and education. My parents read to us and encouraged us to read. As soon as I could read for myself, walking across town to the library became a regular activity. Almost as far back as I can remember, I was interested in science. I assembled a collection of bottles of household substances as my "chemistry set" and examined almost anything I could find with the microscope my parents gave me. Although they had no particular knowledge or special interest in science, they supported mine.

In high school my involvement in debating competitions helped me later to give better scientific talks, that the classes in writing style helped me to write better papers, and the study of French greatly enhanced the tremendously fruitful collaboration I was to have with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji's research group.

In the fall of 1966 I started my studies at Juniata College, as my mother and father, my Aunt Betty, and my sister had before me, and as my younger brother, Tom would later. Juniata had a foreign language requirement, which could be satisfied by studying two years of a language or by passing a test. I passed the test in French, whereupon the chairman of the French department, who knew my sister, a French major in her senior year, suggested that I enroll in an advanced French literature class. Being a naive freshman, I did. The professor lectured in French, we read classic French literature and wrote our exams in French - not what I was used to in high school! I got a "C" on my first test and realized that college was not going to be as easy as high school. I finished the course with an "A", and learned an important lesson: I would have to work hard at Juniata.

Physics with calculus was a challenge as well, but a true joy. Ray Pfrogner, who taught that first course, revealed a beauty and a unity in physics and mathematics that, until then, I had lacked the tools to appreciate. Some evenings he invited us students to showings of films of Richard Feynman's classic public lectures on "The Character of Physical Law." These events included popcorn that Pfrogner popped himself. Feynman's breezy yet incisive style on occasional evenings and Pfrogner's clear expositions every other morning fueled my passion for physics.

In my senior year I spent a semester doing ESR at Argonne National Laboratories, working with Juan McMillan and Ted Halpern. There, I experienced full-time research, performed by a team of professionals who would discuss what the important problems were, decide what to do, how to do it, and then go into the lab and do it. I loved it!

Back at Juniata for my final semester, I was applying to graduate schools. First on my list was Princeton - because I had heard its graduate program was superb and because a visitor to Juniata had told me that a physics student from my school would never be accepted to Princeton! I was accepted, but a visit to Princeton left me unconvinced that I wanted to go there. From the lobby of the Princeton physics building, I called Dan Kleppner at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). So I visited MIT (and Harvard for good measure) and decided to go to MIT. I never regretted that decision, or any of the other decisions I made afterwards based on considerations of the heart.

At MIT I started working with Fred Walther on the high-field hydrogen maser, another X-band magnetic resonance spectrometer. I learned how to do electronics, machining, plumbing and vacuum - all skills I have found essential in experimental research. I also learned from Dan, and from the others in his group, a way of thinking about physics intuitively, and a way of inquiring about a problem that has shaped the way I approach physics to this day. The style of open and lively discussion of physics problems that I found in Dan's group is one that I have tried to emulate in my own group at NIST. I also try to follow the principle Dan taught by example: that one can do physics at the frontiers, competing with the best in the world, and do it with openness, humanity and cooperation.

For my thesis research I measured the magnetic moment of the proton in H2O. Through this project I met others in the community of precision measurements and fundamental constants - in particular, Barry Taylor and Ed Williams at the National Bureau of Standards. I finally wrote up both experiments for my thesis and defended it in 1976.

I accepted a Chaim Weizmann fellowship to work on projects of my own choosing at MIT for another two years. At the party celebrating my thesis in 1976, Dan Kleppner said it was fortunate that I had done the second experiment, using lasers, because otherwise I would probably have ended up going to the National Bureau of Standards (NBS). In 1978 I accepted a position at NBS (later renamed the National Institute of Standards and Technology-NIST) in Barry Taylor's division, working with Ed Williams and Tom Olsen on precision measurements of the proton gyromagnetic ratio and of the Absolute Ampere.

At NBS, with some borrowed equipment and some extra money that Barry Taylor, in his inimitable fashion, obtained from somewhere, I got started with laser cooling. Support from the Office of Naval Research allowed Hal Metcalf to spend time at NBS in those early days. I had worked with Hal a little at MIT, and I knew that his unbounded enthusiasm and his effervescent creativity were priceless qualities. My collaborating with Hal on laser cooling was the first and one of the most important among many valuable interactions with colleagues who came to NIST, or whom I met elsewhere. I have mentioned many of these in my Lecture, and I want to emphasize again how much they have contributed to the development of laser cooling, and particularly, how important the senior group members, Kris Helmerson, Paul Lett, Steve Rolston, and Chris Westbrook, have been. I also want to recall the words of Bengt Nagel in his formal remarks to Steve Chu, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and myself on 10 December 1997 in Stockholm. He said that we were being recognized as leaders and representatives of our groups. The three of us feel very strongly that this Prize honors all of those wonderful colleagues who contributed so much to the development of laser cooling.

Since the announcement of the award of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics, I have been honored to receive greetings and congratulations from colleagues and friends all over the world, as well as from many people whom I did not know. Surely the Nobel Prize is the highest award a scientist could hope to receive, and I have received it with a sense of awe that I am in the company of those who have received it before. But no prize can compare in importance to the family and friends I count as my greatest treasures.

Riccardo Giacconi b. 1931 (in Genova, Italy) 
Received half of the prize. Other half of prize was shared by Raymond Davis Jr. b. 1914 and   Masatoshi Koshiba b. 1926 

Received the Nobel Prize for "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources."
Born in Genova,  Italy, Riccardo Giacconi earned his Ph.D. in cosmic ray physics at the University of Milan. In 1959 he joined American Science and Engineering, a Massachusetts research firm, where he began work on X-Ray astronomy. His team developed grazing incidence X-ray telescopes and launched them on rockets. In 1962 they discovered Sco X-1, the first known x-ray source outside the solar system. They then built theUHURU orbiting X-ray observatory and made the first surveys of the X-ray sky. They discovered 339 X-ray “stars”, most of which turned out to be due to matter falling into black holes and neutron stars. Joining the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in 1973, Giacconi led the construction and successful operation of the powerful X-ray observatory, HEAO-2, also known as Einstein, which made detailed images of X-ray sources. Giacconi was the first director of the Space Telescope Science Institute from 1981 to 1993, and he directed the European Southern Observatory for the next six years. In 1999 he became president of Associated Universities, Inc., the operator of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. He has simultaneously held positions as professor of physics and astronomy (1982-97) and research professor (since 1998) at Johns Hopkins University.
[Complete biography will appear soon] 

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Giulio Natta (1903-1979) Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1963
[Prize was divided equally with Karl Ziegler]

"for their discoveries in the field of the chemistry and technology of high polymers"

Giulio Natta was born at Imperia on February 26, 1903. He graduated in Chemical Engineering at the Polytechnic of Milan in 1924 and passed the examinations entitling him to teach there in 1927. In 1933 he was established on the staff of Pavia University as a full professor and at the same time was appointed director of the Institute of General Chemistry at that University, where he stayed till 1935, that is until he was appointed full professor in physical chemistry at the University of Rome. From 1936 to 1938 he was full professor and director of the Institute of Industrial Chemistry at the Polytechnic of Turin. He has been full professor and director of the Department of Industrial Chemistry at the Milan Polytechnic since 1938.

Now a world famous scientist, Prof. Natta began his career with a study of solids by means of X-rays and electron diffraction. He then used the same methods for studying catalysts and the structure of some high organic polymers (the latter from 1934). His kinetic research on methanol synthesis, on selective hydrogenation of unsaturated organic compounds and on oxosynthesis led to an understanding of the mechanism of these reactions and to an improvement in the selectivity of catalysts. In 1938 Prof. Natta began to study the production of synthetic rubber in Italy; he took part in research work on butadiene and was the first to accomplish physical separation of butadiene from 1-butadiene by a new method of extractive distillation. Also that same year he began to investigate the polymerisation of olefins and the kinetics of subsequent concurrent reactions. In 1953, with financial aid from a large Italian chemical company, Montecatini, Prof. Natta extended the research conducted by Ziegler on organometallic catalysts to the stereospecific polymerization, thus discovering new classes of polymers with a sterically ordered structure, viz. isotactic, syndiotactic and di-isotactic polymers and linear non branched olefinic polymers and copolymers with an atactic (or sterically nonordered) structure. These studies, which were developed for industrial application in Montecatini's laboratories, led to the realisation of a thermoplastic material, isotactic polypropylene, which Montecatini were the first to produce on an industrial scale, in 1957, in their Ferrara plant. This product has been marketed successfully as a plastic material, by the name of Moplen, as a synthetic fibre, by the name of Meraklon, as a monofilament by the name of Merakrin and as packing film, by the name of Moplefan.

By X- ray investigations, Prof. Natta has also succeeded in determining the exact arrangement of chains in the lattice of the new crystalline polymers he has discovered. No less important is his later research which led to the synthesis of completely new elastomers, in two different ways: by polymerization of butadiene into cis-1,4 polymers with a very high degree of steric purity and by copolymerization of ethylene with other alpha-olefins (propylene), originating extremely interesting materials such as saturated synthetic rubbers. The vulcanisation of these rubbers was made possible by the usual methods used for natural rubber, with the introduction of unsaturated monomeric units (terpolymers containing ethylene and propylene). The processes for the asymmetric synthesis, which allow the production of optically active macromolecules from optically inactive monomers, are of great scientific importance, due to their similarity to the natural biological processes. Other interesting results obtained by Natta in the field of macromolecular chemistry concern the synthesis of crystalline alternating copolymers of different couples of monomers and the synthesis of various sterically ordered polymers of non-hydrocarbon monomers.

Prof. Natta's scientific and technical activity is documented in over 700 published papers, of which about 500 concern stereoregular polymers, and by a large number of patents in many different countries. In 1961 he was made an honorary life member of the New York Academy of Sciences of which he had been a fellow since 1958. In 1955 he became a "national member" of the Accademia dei Lincei; he is also a member of the Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere and of the Accademia delle Scienze of Turin. He was made honorary member of the Austrian (1960), Belgian (that awarded him the STAS medal) (1962), and Swiss (1963) Chemical Societies. Professor Natta received a gold medal from the town of Milan (1960), from the President of the Italian Republic (1961, reserved to those who gained merits in the field of school, culture and art), the first international gold medal of the synthetic rubber industry (1961); a gold medal from the Milan district (1962) and from the Society of Plastic Engineers (New York, 1963), the Perrin medal from the French Chemical Physical Society, and the Lavoisier medal from the Chemical Society of France (both in 1963), the Perkin gold medal of the English Society of Dyers and Colourists (1963), the John Scott award from the Board of Directors of the City Trust of Philadelphia, and the Medal "Leonardus Vincius Florentinus Doctor Ingenieurs" of FIDIIS, Paris (1971). The Turin University gave him an honorary degree in pure chemistry, and in 1963 Prof. Natta received an honorary degree from Mainz University.

Prof.Natta is a honorary member of the Industrial Chemical Society of Paris (1966) and of the Chemical Society of London (1970); an honorary member of the Rotary Club; associated foreign member of the Académie des Sciences de l'Institut de France (1964); member of the National Academy of XL, Rome (1964); joined member of the International Academy of Astronautics, Paris (1965 ); foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of Moscow, U.S.S.R. (1966); honorary president of the Italian Section of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE). He holds the following awards and honorary degrees: gold medal of the Union of Italian Chemists (1964); gold medal "Lomonosov" of the Moscow Academy of Sciences (1969); the "Carl-Dietrich-Harries-Plakette, of the Deutsche Kautschuk Gesellschaft, Frankfurt/Main (1971); honorary degrees from the University of Genoa (1964), the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, New York (1964), the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium (1965), and in 1971 from ESPI, University of Paris.

 The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

 Camillo Golgi (1843-1926) Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1906
[Awarded jointly to Santiago Ramon y Cajal]

"in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system"

Camillo Golgi was born at Corteno near Brescia on July 7, 1843, the son of a physician. He studied medicine at University of Pavia under Mantegazza, Bizzozero and Oehl. After graduating in 1865 he continued to work in Pavia at the Hospital of St. Matteo. Golgi himself stated that Bizzozero greatly influenced him and his methods of scientific research; at that time most of his investigations were concerned with the nervous system, i.e. insanity, neurology and the lymphatics of the brain. In 1872 he accepted the post of Chief Medical Officer at the Hospital for the Chronically Sick at Abbiategrasso, and it is believed that in the seclusion of this hospital, in a little kitchen which he had converted into a laboratory, he first started his investigations into the nervous system.

Golgi returned to the University of Pavia as Extraordinary Professor of Histology, went to Siena for a short time, but returned to Pavia and was appointed to the Chair for General Pathology in 1881, in succession to his teacher Bizzozero. He settled down in Pavia for good, and married Donna Lina, a niece of Bizzozero.

Already while working at the Hospital of St. Matteo, Golgi became interested in the investigation of the causes of malaria and he must be credited for having determined the three forms of the parasite and the three types of fever. After prolonged studies he found a way of photographing the most characteristic phases in 1890.

Golgi was a famous teacher, his laboratory was open to anyone anxious to do research. He never actually practised medicine, but directed the Department of General Pathology at St.Matteo Hospital where young doctors were trained. He also founded and directed the Istituto Sieroterapico-Vaccinogeno of the Province of Pavia. Golgi was Rector of Pavia University for a long time and was also made a Senator of the Kingdom of Italy.

He was an old man during the First World War, but assumed the responsibility for a Military Hospital in Pavia, where he created a neuro-pathological and mechano-therapeutical centre for the study and treatment of peripheral nervous lesions and for the rehabilitation of the wounded.

However, the work of greatest importance which Golgi carried out was a revolutionary method of staining individual nerve and cell structures, which is referred to as the «black reaction». This method uses a weak solution of silver nitrate and is particularly valuable in tracing the processes and most delicate ramifications of cells. Golgi himself was extremely modest and reticent about his work and it is not known when exactly he made this invention. All through his life, however, he continued to work on these lines, modifying and improving this technique.

Golgi received the highest honours and awards in recognition of his work. He shared the Nobel Prize for 1906 with Santiago Ramón y Cajal for their work on the structure of the nervous system. The Historical Museum at the University of Pavia dedicated a hall to Golgi, where more than 80 certificates of honorary degrees, diplomas and awards are exhibited.

Golgi married Donna Lina Aletti, previously mentioned. They had no children of their own, but adopted his niece, now Mrs. Carolina Golgi-Papini in Rome. He died at Pavia, where he had lived all his life, on January 21, 1926.

Salvador E. Luria (1912-1991) Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1969
[Awarded jointly to Max Delbrück and Alfred D. Hershey]

"for their discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses"

Salvador Edward Luria was born on August 13th, 1912, in Torino, Italy. He has been a naturalized citizen of the U.S.A. since January 1947. In 1929 he started his studies in Medicine at the University of Torino, where he obtained his M. D. summa cum laude in 1935. From 1938 to 1940 he was Research Fellow at the Institute of Radium in Paris; 1940-1942, Research Assistant in Surgical Bacteriology at Columbia University; from 1943 to 1950 he was Instructor, Assistant Professor, and Associate Professor of Bacteriology at Indiana University; in 1950 he was appointed Professor of Microbiology at the University of Illinois; from 1959-1964 he has been Professor of Microbiology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; in 1964 he became Sedgwick Professor of Biology at the M. I. T. and in 1965, non-resident Fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. In 1970 Luria was appointed Institute Professor at the Department of Biology of the M.I.T. Professor Luria was honoured with the following awards: 1935, Lepetit Prize; 1965, Lenghi Prize, Accademia dei Lincei; 1969, Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, Columbia University.

He was Guggenheim Fellow, 1942-1943 at Vanderbilt and Princeton; during the year 1963-1964 he worked again in Paris, this time at the Institut Pasteur. He is, or has been, Editor or Member of the Editorial Board of the following journals: Journal of Bacteriology, Virology, Experimental Cell Research, Journal of Molecular Biology, Photochemistry and Photobiology, American Naturalist, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Annual Review of Genetics.

Professor Luria is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Microbiology, American Society for Microbiology (President, 1967-1968), American Society of Biological Chemists, Society for General Microbiology, Genetics Society, American Naturalists, Society for the Study of Development and Growth, A. A. A. S., Sigma Xi, A. A. U. P.

Salvador Edward Luria was, in 1945, married to Zella Hurwitz, they have one son, Daniel, who is studying economics. His wife, Zella Hurwitz Luria, Ph. D., is a Professor of Psychology at Tufts University.

Renato Dulbecco (1914 - ) Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine 1975
[Awarded jointly to David Baltimore and Howard Martin, Temin]

"for their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumour viruses and the genetic material of the cell"

I was born in Catanzaro, Italy, from a Calabrese mother and a Ligurian father. I stayed in that city for a short time; my father was called into the army (World War I) and we moved to the north, Cuneo and Torino. At the end of the war my father, who was in the "Genio Civile", was sent to Imperia, Liguria, where we stayed for many years. The life I remember begins at Imperia, where I went to school, including the Ginnasio-Liceo "De Amicis". What I remember most of that period, besides my family and the few friends, was the rocky beach where I spent most of my time during the summer holiday, and a small meterological observatory, where I used to spend lots of my free time throughout the year. There I developed a strong liking for physics, which I put to good use by building an electronic seismograph, probably one of the first of its kind, which actually worked.

I graduated from high school at 16 (1930) and went to the University in Torino. Although I liked especially physics and mathematics for which I had considerable talent, I decided to study medicine. This profession had for me a strong emotional appeal, which was reinforced by having an uncle who was an excellent surgeon.

In Torino I was a very successful student, but I soon realized that I was interested in biology more than in applied medicine. So I went to work with Giuseppe Levi, the professor of Anatomy, where I learned Histology and the rudiments of cell culture. For my degree, however, I went to morbid anatomy and pathology. In Levi's laboratory I met two students who later had a strong influence on my life: Salvador Luria and Rita Levi-Montalcini.

All through the student years I was at the top of my class although I was two years younger than everbody else. After taking my MD degree in 1936 I was called up for military service as a medical officer. In 1938 I was discharged and returned to pathology. A year later, however, I was called up again because of the Second World War. I was sent briefly to the French front, and a year later to Russia. There I had a narrow escape on the front of the Don during a major Russian offensive in 1942: I was hospitalized for several months and sent home. When Mussolini's government collapsed and Italy was taken over by the German army I hid in a small village in Piemonte and joined the Resistance, as physician of the local partisan units. I continued to visit the Institute of Morbid Anatomy in Torino where I joined in underground political activities together with Giacomo Mottura, a senior collegue. I was part of the "Committee for National Liberation" of the city of Torino, and became a councillor of that city in the first postwar city council. However, the life of routine politics was not for me and within months I left that position to return to the laboratory. I also went back to school, enrolling in regular courses in physics, which I pursued for the next two years.

I moved back to Levi's Institute and worked together with Levi-Montalcini, who encouraged me to go to the USA to work in modern biology. My dream was to work in genetics of some very simple organism, possibly using radiations. This dream became a reality after Luria, who had been in the USA since the beginning of the war, and was working in this very field, came in the summer of 1946 to Torino. He encouraged me and offered me a small salary for working in his group. I was urged in this direction by Rita Levi-Montalcini, who was herself preparing to go to another laboratory in USA. So in the autumn 1947 we both embarked for the US.

I went to work with Luria in Bloomington, Indiana, where I shared with him a small laboratory under the roof, to be soon joined by Jim Watson. Within a year I had made two good pieces of work, using my mathematical knowledge, and discovered photoreactivation of phage inactivated by ultraviolet light. This attracted the interest of Max Delbrück, who offered me a job in his group at Caltech.

I moved to Caltech in the summer 1949. I remember that memorable trip from Indiana to California with my family in an old car, with our limited possessions in a small trailer behind. I was fascinated by the beauty and immensity of the USA and the kindness of its people. Reaching the Pacific Ocean in Oregon was like arriving at a new world, an impression that continued and increased as we made our way south to Pasadena. I resolved at that time that I would not like to live anywhere else in the world - a resolution that I changed only some twenty-three years later.

At Caltech I continued to work with phages for a few years. One day I was told by Delbrück that a rich citizen had given Caltech a fund for work in the animal virus field. He asked me whether I was interested. My medical background and the experience gained in Levi's laboratory came back to me and I accepted. After visiting the major centers of animal virus work in the US I set out to discover the way to assay animal viruses by a plaque technique, similar to that used for phages, using cell cultures. Within less than a year, I worked out such a method, which opened up animal virology to quantitative work. I used the technique for studying the biological properties of poliovirus. These successes brought me an appointment first to associate professor, then to full professor at Caltech.

In the late fifties I had as a student Howard Temin, who, together with Harry Rubin, then a postdoctoral fellow in my laboratory, worked on the Rous Sarcoma Virus. Their work started my interest in the tumor virus fields. I myself started working on an oncogenic virus, polyoma virus, in 1958, and continued until now. This work has led to discovering many aspects of the interaction of this virus (and of SV40) with the host cells in lytic infection and transformation.

I moved from Caltech to the Salk Institute in 1962, and in 1972 to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories in London. One of the reasons for the latter move was the opportunity to work in the field of human cancer.

My work throughout the years has been strongly influenced by my associates. Giuseppe Levi taught me the essential value of criticism in scientific work, Rita Levi-Montalcini helped me to determine my goals at an early stage; Salvador Luria introduced me to viruses; Herman Muller, at the University of Indiana taught me the significance of Genetics; Max Delbrück helped me understand the scientific method and the goals of biology, and Marguerite Vogt contributed to my knowledge of animal cell cultures. Perhaps more important than all this, the daily interaction through the years with a continuously changing group of young investigators shaped my work. For although I had general goals, the actual path followed by my research was pragmatically determined by what could be done at any given time, and my young collaborators were an essential part of this process. I always did as much as possible of the experimental work with my own hands, but in the later part of my research career this became progressively less feasible, both because the demand on my time increased and because the increasing technical sophistication and complexities of the experiments demanded a great deal of specialized skills.

Since 1962 my scientific life has had the support of my second wife, Maureen, who for some years helped in my experiments. Without her affectionate encouragement and sound advice I doubt whether I would have been able to accomplish what I have done.

Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909 - ) Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1986
[Awarded jointly to Stanley Cohen]
"for their discoveries of growth factors"

My twin sister Paola and I were born in Turin on April 22, 1909, the youngest of four children. Our parents were Adamo Levi, an electrical engineer and gifted mathematician, and Adele Montalcini, a talented painter and an exquisite human being. Our older brother Gino, who died twelve years ago of a heart attack, was one of the most well known Italian architects and a professor at the University of Turin. Our sister Anna, five years older than Paola and myself, lives in Turin with her children and grandchildren. Ever since adolescence, she has been an enthusiastic admirer of the great Swedish writer, the Nobel Laureate Selma Lagerlöf, and she infected me so much with her enthusiasm that I decided to become a writer and describe Italian saga "à la Lagerlöf". But things were to take a different turn.
The four of us enjoyed a most wonderful family atmosphere, filled with love and reciprocal devotion. Both parents were highly cultured and instilled in us their high appreciation of intellectual pursuit. It was, however, a typical Victorian style of life, all decisions being taken by the head of the family, the husband and father. He loved us dearly and had a great respect for women, but he believed that a professional career would interfere with the duties of a wife and mother. He therefore decided that the three of us - Anna, Paola and I - would not engage in studies which open the way to a professional career and that we would not enroll in the University.

Ever since childhood, Paola had shown an extraordinary artistic talent and father's decision did not prevent her full-time dedication to painting. She became one of the most outstanding women painters in Italy and is at present still in full activity. I had a more difficult time. At twenty, I realized that I could not possibly adjust to a feminine role as conceived by my father, and asked him permission to engage in a professional career. In eight months I filled my gaps in Latin, Greek and mathematics, graduated from high school, and entered medical school in Turin. Two of my university colleagues and close friends, Salvador Luria and Renato Dulbecco, were to receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, respectively, seventeen and eleven years before I would receive the same most prestigious award. All three of us were students of the famous Italian histologist, Giuseppe Levi. We are indebted to him for a superb training in biological science, and for having learned to approach scientific problems in a most rigorous way at a time when such an approach was still unusual.

In 1936 I graduated from medical school with a summa cum laude degree in Medicine and Surgery, and enrolled in the three year specialization in neurology and psychiatry, still uncertain whether I should devote myself fully to the medical profession or pursue at the same time basic research in neurology. My perplexity was not to last too long.

In 1936 Mussolini issued the "Manifesto per la Difesa della Razza", signed by ten Italian 'scientists'. The manifesto was soon followed by the promulgation of laws barring academic and professional careers to non-Aryan Italian citizens. After a short period spent in Brussels as a guest of a neurological institute, I returned to Turin on the verge of the invasion of Belgium by the German army, Spring 1940, to join my family. The two alternatives left then to us were either to emigrate to the United States, or to pursue some activity that needed neither support nor connection with the outside Aryan world where we lived. My family chose this second alternative. I then decided to build a small research unit at home and installed it in my bedroom. My inspiration was a 1934 article by Viktor Hamburger reporting on the effects of limb extirpation in chick embryos. My project had barely started when Giuseppe Levi, who had escaped from Belgium invaded by Nazis, returned to Turin and joined me, thus becoming, to my great pride, my first and only assistant.

The heavy bombing of Turin by Anglo-American air forces in 1941 made it imperative to abandon Turin and move to a country cottage where I rebuilt my mini-laboratory and resumed my experiments. In the Fall of 1943, the invasion of Italy by the German army forced us to abandon our now dangerous refuge in Piemonte and flee to Florence, where we lived underground until the end of the war. In Florence I was in daily contact with many close, dear friends and courageous partisans of the "Partito di Azione". In August of 1944, the advancing Anglo-American armies forced the German invaders to leave Florence. At the Anglo-American Headquarters, I was hired as a medical doctor and assigned to a camp of war refugees who were brought to Florence by the hundreds from the North where the war was still raging. Epidemics of infectious diseases and of abdominal typhus spread death among the refugees, where I was in charge as nurse and medical doctor, sharing with them their suffering and the daily danger of death.

The war in Italy ended in May 1945. I returned with my family to Turin where I resumed my academic positions at the University. In the Fall of 1947, an invitation from Professor Viktor Hamburger to join him and repeat the experiments which we had performed many years earlier in the chick embryo, was to change the course of my life.

Although I had planned to remain in St. Louis for only ten to twelve months, the excellent results of our research made it imperative for me to postpone my return to Italy. In 1956 I was offered the position of Associate Professor and in 1958 that of Full Professor, a position which I held until retirement in 1977. In 1962 I established a research unit in Rome, dividing my time between this city and St. Louis. From 1969 to 1978 I also held the position of Director of the Institute of Cell Biology of the Italian National Council of Research, in Rome. Upon retirement in 1979, I became Guest Professor of this same institute.

The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences

Franco Modigliani (1918 - 2003) Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences 1985

"for his pioneering analyses of saving and of financial markets"

  Modigliani relates: I was born in Rome, Italy, the son of Enrico Modigliani and Olga Flaschel. My father was a leading pediatrician in the city and my mother was a volunteer social worker. My school performance in the early years was good though not outstanding. Then, in 1932, a major trauma occurred.

My father died as a consequence of an operation. I suddenly realized how deeply I loved and admired him and at 13 my whole world seemed to collapse. After this event my school performance for the next 3 years became spotty until I moved to Liceo Visconti, the best high school in Rome, and the challenge proved healthy and I seemed to blossom. Encouraged, I decided to skip the last year of the Liceo, passed the required difficult exams and entered the University of Rome at 17 (two years ahead of the norm).

My family hoped that I would follow in my father's steps, entering a career in medicine. I was torn for a while, but finally decided against it because of my low tolerance level for sufferings and blood. Instead I chose law which in Italy, opens the way to many career possibilities. In my second year I decided to enter a national competition sponsored by the student organization (I Littoriali della Coltura) in the area of economics. To my surprise I won first prize and, although now I would hesitate to recommend that first essay as a significant contribution to economics, clearly, it served the purpose of establishing my current interest in economics. Unfortunately, under fascism, teaching in this field was dismal, and only with the advice of the few good economists I knew personally, and especially of Riccardo Bachi, I began on my own to read the English and Italian classics.

The Littoriali had put me in contact with young antifascists, and my political opposition to the regime began then. My involvement with my future wife, Serena Calabi, and her remarkable father, Giulio, who was a long standing antifascist also contributed. In 1938 the Italian racial laws were promulgated and at the invitation of my future in laws, I joined them in Paris where, in May 1939, Serena and I were married. I enrolled at the Sorbonne but found the teaching there uninspiring and a waste of time, so I spent my time studying on my own and writing my thesis at the Bibliotheque St. Genevieve. In June 1939 I returned briefly to Rome to discuss my thesis and receive my degree of Doctor Juris from the University of Rome. Shortly after this, fearing that Europe was going to be soon engulfed in a bloody war, we applied for an immigration visa for the U.S. and arrived in New York in August 1939, a few days before the beginning of World War II.

It became apparent that our stay in the U.S. would be a long one and I immediately began thinking on how best to pursue my interest in economics. I had the great luck of being awarded a free tuition fellowship by the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science of the New School for Social Research, an institution freshly created to give haven to the European scholars who were victims of the three fascist dictatorships. Thus in fall 1939, I started on a routine that was to last three years, of studying at night from 6 - 10, while working during the day selling European books to support my family which soon included our first son: Andre. I worked hard but, nonetheless, remember that period as an exciting one, as I was discovering my passion for economics, thanks also to excellent teachers, including Adolph Lowe and above all Jacob Marschak to whom I owe a debt of gratitude beyond words. He helped me develop solid foundations in economics and econometrics, some mathematical foundations, introduced me to the great issues of the day and gave me, together with his unforgettable kindness, constant encouragement. In particular I owe to him that blend of theory and empirical analysis, theories that can be tested and empirical work guided by theory - that has characterized a good deal of my later work. Marschak also provided me with an experience that contributed to my development, by inviting me to participate in an informal seminar which met in New York around 1940-41, whose members included, among others, Abraham Wald, Tjalling Koopmans and Oscar Lange.

I consider that my formal training ended in 1941 when Marschak left the New School to join the University of Chicago, and I obtained my first teaching job as an instructor at New Jersey College for Women. My first published article in English, "Liquidity Preference and the Theory of Interest and Money", Econometrica, Vol. 12, No. 1, January 1944, which is also, substantially, my doctoral dissertation, and which I regard as one of my major contributions, appeared some two years later. The result of discussions in Marschak's seminar and of a running debate with Abba Lerner, it purports to integrate the Keynesian "revolution", then generally regarded as a total break with the past, with the mainstream of classical economics.

In 1942 I became an instructor in economics and statistics at Bard College, then a residential college of Columbia University, and came to appreciate the unique qualities of life in an American college campus, especially the intimate association with first rate students. In 1944 I returned to the New School as a Lecturer and a Research Associate at the Institute of World Affairs where together with Hans Neisser, I was responsible for a project whose results were eventually published in National Income and International Trade. During this period I also made my first contribution to the study of saving, which has since come to be known as the Duesenberry-Modigliani hypothesis.

In fall 1948 I left New York, having been awarded the prestigious Political Economy Fellowship of the University of Chicago as well as offered the opportunity of joining, as a Research Consultant, the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics, then the leading institution in its field. Shortly after my arrival I accepted an attractive position at the University of Illinois as director of a research project on "Expectations and Business Fluctuations". However, I remained in Chicago through the academic year 1949-50, greatly benefiting from my association with the Cowles Commission, staffed and visited by people like Marschak, Koopmans, Arrow, Simon, at a time when the profession was absorbing two important revolutions, one centering on the theory of choice under uncertainty, initiated by von Neuman and Morgenstern, and the other on statistical inference from non-experimental observations, inspired by Haavelmo.

My association with the University of Illinois lasted only till 1952 because of internal strife. During that brief time, I befriended a brilliant young graduate student, Richard Brumberg. With his collaboration we laid the foundations for what was to become the "Life Cycle Hypothesis of Saving". It was elaborated in 1953 and 1954 in two papers, one dealing with individual behaviour and the other with aggregate saving. After we had both left the University of Illinois, Brumberg had gone to complete his Ph.D. at the John Hopkins University and I joined Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie-Mellon University. The "aggregate" paper was only published in 1980 in my Collected Papers because the shock of Brumberg's untimely death in 1955 sapped my will to undertake the revisions and condensation that would have been required for publication in one of the standard professional journals.

My association with Carnegie, which lasted until 1960, was a very productive one. In addition to completing the two basic papers setting the foundations for the "Life Cycle Hypothesis", I collaborated on a book dealing with the problem of optimal production smoothing, and wrote the two essays with Miller on the effect of financial structure and dividend policy on the market value of a firm. I also published a paper with E. Grunberg on the predictability of social events when the agent reacts to prediction, which later was to provide one of the pillars for the "theory of rational expectations". All of these contributions represented, to some extent, the coming to fruition of seeds started during my research on "Expectations and Business Fluctuations".

In 1960 I was a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to which I returned after a year at Northwestern University, and where I have remained ever since. Supported by this unique institution and its unique colleagues, I have pursued the interests developed earlier in macroeconomics, including criticism of the monetarist positions, generalizations of the monetary mechanism and empirical tests of the" Life Cycle Hypothesis". I have also branched out into new areas and, in particular, international finance and the international payment system, the effects of and cures for inflation, stabilization policies in extensively indexed open economies, and into various fields of finance such as credit rationing, the term structure of interest rates and the valuation of speculative assets.

In the late sixties I also had a major responsibility for designing a large scale model of the U.S. economy, the MPS, sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank and still utilized by it. Finally, I have participated actively in the debate over economic policies both in Italy and the U.S., concentrating lately on the deleterious effects of the huge public deficits.  

The Nobel Prize in Peace

Ernesto Teodoro Moneta (1833-1918) Nobel Prize in Peace 1907
[Prize divided equally with Louis Renault]

Ernesto Teodoro Moneta had a personality as paradoxical as the term «militant pacifist» which was so often applied to him. He was a nationalistic internationalist, a deeply religious anticlerical propagandist, a crusader for physical fitness who daily took a tram to avoid walking across a square to lunch in a restaurant opposite his office.

Born of aristocratic Milanese parents, he spent his childhood in two country houses where his impoverished family could still live on a patriarchal scale, although without luxury. He was profoundly affected by his experiences in the uprising against Austria when, at the age of fifteen, he fought next to his father to defend his family home and saw three Austrian soldiers die nearby. It was probably then that Moneta's dual advocacy of peace and yet of fighting for his own kind of nationalism was born. >From 1848 to 1866 he spent a great deal of his time in efforts for Italian independence and unification, fighting with Garibaldi in 1859 and 1860 and later under General Sirtori whose aide-de-camp he became. Disillusioned by the campaign of 1866, however, he cut short what seemed to be a promising army career and returned to civilian life, although he remained personally loyal to General Sirtori all his life.

Moneta was a handsome, warm, cheerful man who enjoyed riding horses, acting in amateur theatricals, and contributing play reviews to Il Secolo, daily newspaper founded in 1866 by Edoardo Sonzogno. When two of his friends took over Il Secolo in 1867, he accepted the position of editor, which he held from 1867 until 1895. Journalism proved to be the ideal outlet for Moneta's dynamism and idealism, his career as a pacifist being an organic outgrowth of his daily intellectual stimulation and passionate commitment as editor of Il Secolo.

A man of strong personal convictions, Moneta was respected for his integrity as much as for his courage and willingness to accept innovations. He forged Il Secolo into a powerful instrument for shaping public opinion without compromising its editorial balance. Although he respected religion and was a practicing Catholic, he permitted Il Secolo to adopt an anticlerical stance because he believed for many years that specific abuses among the clergy were impeding Italian unification and social progress. He became virtually estranged from his wife - and from his two sons during her lifetime - largely because she was unable to accept this apparent inconsistency in her husband's attitude toward the religion which meant so much to her.

Since Moneta understood and sympathized with the problems of the Italian army, he campaigned vigorously in the columns of Il Secolo for reforms which public opinion could bring about. He contended that the lengthy basic training of recruits and conscripts was wasteful and inefficient, that organized athletics, target practice, and civilian drills in the villages could drastically cut down the time needed to train recruits, that militarism could be de-emphasized, yet the effective strength of the army actually increased.

During the last thirty years of the nineteenth century, Moneta gathered material and insights for his opus Le guerre, le insurrezioni e la pace nel secolo XIX [Wars, Insurrections and Peace in the Nineteenth Century], which he published in four volumes in 1903, 1904, 1906, and 1910. The part of this work which remains of greatest interest is the first volume, in which he describes the development of the international peace movement during the course of the century. Moneta concentrates his interest on military rather than on social or economic issues throughout the work and utilizes the point of view and approach of the journalist, narrating in a first-person, anecdotal style. His recurrent theme is the lack of substantive results achieved by wars and militarism. Yet, during his career as editor of Il Secolo, Moneta was one of the most vocal nationalists in Italy. He managed to make his intense patriotism and his devotion to the cause of national defense and of Italian unification consistent with his dedication to the fostering of international peace and arbitration, becoming a full-time pacifist immediately upon his retirement from Il Secolo. Although his highly personal brand of nationalism almost approached chauvinism, he fought for years against the contempt for Austria displayed by many Il Secolo readers and against the «Gallophobia» which swept Italy during the 1880's.

The range of activities in which Moneta engaged for the propagation of world peace is impressive. In 1890 he began to issue an annual almanac called L'Amico della pace. After his retirement as editor of Il Secolo, he continued to contribute to its columns from time to time and to republish many of his articles in pamphlets and periodicals. Ever aware of the value of propaganda for peace, he even printed one-page tracts and distributed them to rural schoolmasters. In 1898 he founded a fortnightly review, La Vita internazionale, which gained sufficient prestige to ensure publication on a regular basis for many years during a period when most such periodicals languished in Italy for lack of interest and financial support.

His work for peace was not solely of a literary nature. He became the Italian representative on the Commission of the International Peace Bureau in 1895. He attended peace congresses for many years, and his courtly, deceptively diffident presence became increasingly familiar and respected. He had encouraged l'Unione lombarda per la pace e l'arbitrato internazionale [the Lombard Union for International Peace and Arbitration] since its foundation in 18871, and had himself founded, besides several organizations of an ephemeral nature, the Società per la pace e la giustizia internazionale [Society for International Peace and Justice]2, which lasted from 1887 until 19373, long after his death. He lectured at the newly founded Italian Popular University. In 1906 he planned and had constructed a Pavilion for Peace at the Milan International Exposition, during which he presided over the fifteenth annual International Peace Congress.

From 1900 until his death in 1918, Moneta suffered from glaucoma, and he spent long periods in the country recuperating from eye operations which barely prevented total blindness. Physical suffering refined Moneta's high sense of purpose but did not diminish his essential exuberance, even in advanced age, or his ability to state vigorously his convictions. During World War I, for example, supporting Italy's role in the war, he said4: «I, as an Italian, cannot put myself au dessus de la mêlée [above the fray]. I must participate in the life of my country, rejoice in her joys, and weep in her sorrows.»

Moneta succumbed to pneumonia in 1918 at the age of eighty-five. The monument which his friends erected to him in 1925 was carted off to a warehouse during the Fascist regime, thus escaping destruction when a bomb fell on the site during World War II. The inscription on its base preserves the essential paradox of his life, for it honors him both as a partisan of Garibaldi's and as an apostle of peace.  

The Pritzker Prize in Architecture

Aldo Rossi (1931-1997 ) Laureate Pritzker Prize 1990

Aldo Rossi was born in Milan in 1931 where his father was engaged in the manufacture of bicycles, bearing the family name, a business he says was founded by his grandfather. While growing up during the years of World War II, Rossi studied at the School of the Somaschi Fathers in Lake Como, and later at the Collegio Alessandro Volta in Lecco. Shortly after the war ended, he entered the Milan Polytechnic receiving his architecture degree in 1959.

In 1956 he began his career working with Ignazio Gardella, and later with Marco Zanuso. From 1955 to 1964 he was editor-in-chief of "Casabella-Continuità". He has taught at the Zilrich Federal Polytechnic and since 1976 has collaborated with leading American universities such as Cornell and Yale. He is professor of architectural composition at Venice University.

Although early film aspirations were gradually transposed to architecture, he still retains strong interest in drama. Beginning in 1983 he directed the architectural section of the Venice Biennale. In fact, he says, "In all of my architecture, I have always been fascinated by the theatre." For the Venice Biennale in 1979, he designed the Teatro del Mondo, a floating theatre, built under a joint commission from the theatre and architecture commissions of the Biennale. Rossi described the project in its site, as "a place where architecture ended and the world of the imagination began." In Canada, the first Rossi project in the Western Hemisphere was completed in 1987 when the Toronto Lighthouse Theatre was built on the banks of Lake Ontario.

His other projects and designs include: apartment complexes in Milan's Gallaratese 2 district (1969-73); the Modena cemetery, together with G. Braghieri (1976); a housing project in Berlin along the Verbindungskanal (1976); a "teatrino scientifico" together with G. Braghieri and R. Freno (1978), the World Theatre, Venice (1979); a design for West Cannareggio, together with G. Dubbini, A. De Poli and M. Narpozzi (1980); a design for the Carlo Felice Theatre, Genoa (1982), a design for a Tower on Lake Orta (1986).

In his "Autobiografia Scientifica", Aldo Rossi stated that: "It is impossible to think without having an obsession; it is impossible to create anything imaginative unless the foundation is rigorous indisputable and repetitive". His poetical "obsession" is with absence, the coherent and obstinate language of abstraction and reduction expressed in all his architectural creations, from the apartment complexes in Milan's Gallaratese district to the Modena cemetery, from the World Theatre in Venice to the building in Rauchstrasse, Berlin, to quote but a few of the most well known.

The elemental roofing the geometric simplification, the rhythmic distribution of apertures, the assemblage of fragments and primary forms, the love of articulated space that shapes and often determines the entire structure of the design: these are the co-ordinates and formal devices of Rossi's poetical expression. They are also characteristic of the objects he designs for industry. These objects appeal to us at first sight; the "La conica" espresso coffee maker and "II conico" kettle by Alessi, or the famous cabin wardrobe so evocative of seaside memories are real domestic microarchitectures. metaphors of Great Architecture.

The naif appeal of Rossi’s designs perhaps stems first from their existence in a kind of poetic suspension, then from the complex of symbolic suggestions they evoke. In this connection, two projects are emblematic: one for the World Theatre in Venice, the other for a "Tower of memories" (competition for a landmark in Melbourne). The former, a travelling scenic machine, is a tribute to one of the themes dear to the theatrical tradition of sixteenth-century Venice. Destined to float for a few months in the waters of the Lagoon, it is an ephemeral apparition, whose very transience has become its "raison d'etre". The latter, a Tower built over the railways in an unknown town had only a symbolic function, symbolic par excellence.

When Rossi was introduced at Harvard to deliver the Walter Gropius Lecture, the chairman of the architecture department, Jose Rafael Moneo said, "When future historians look for an explanation as to why the destructive tendencies that threatened our cities changed, Rossi's name will appear one of those who helped to establish a wiser and more respectful attitude."

Robert Venturi (1925 - ) Laureate Pritzker Prize 1991

Robert Venturi has been described as one of the most original talents in contemporary architecture. He has also been credited with saving modern architecture from itself. He has done this by being eloquent verbally with his writings and visually with the forms of his buildings. Like other Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureates before him, he is a writer, a teacher, an artist and philosopher, as well as an architect.

One of his earliest memories was when on one of his first trips to New York City "— maybe I was 10 years old — my father's impulsively instructing the cab driver to pull over and wait as we approached the old Penn station on Seventh Avenue, and then conducting me down the gallery that overlooked the great hall based on the Baths of Caracalla."

Venturi graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1947 and received his M.F.A. there in 1950. He furthered his studies as a Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome from 1954 to 1956 where "by means of its location, I might exist every day in architectural heaven, and learn new lessons via Michelangelo, Borromini, Brasini, hilltowns, and other historical mentors and places, and where I discovered the validity of Mannerism in art for our time, and from whose perspective as an expatriate I could better perceive my own country and the genius of its everyday phenomena, to see the Piazza Navona and Main Street.

Shortly after his return to this country, he taught an architectural theory course at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Architecture. In the past three decades since, he has lectured at numerous other institutions including Yale, Princeton, Harvard, UCLA, Rice and the American Academy in Rome.

In his first book, "Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture," published in 1966 by the Museum of Modern Art, Venturi posed the question, "Is not Main Street almost all right?" He was arguing for what he called "the messy vitality" of the built environment. As he puts it, "We were calling for an architecture that promotes richness and ambiguity over unity and clarity, contradiction and redundancy over harmony and simplicity." He was challenging Modernism with the multiple solutions available from history—a history defined as relating not only to the specific building site, but the history of all architecture. He wanted architecture to deal with the complexities of the city, to become more contextual.

In his original preface to the book, Venturi states, "As an architect I try to be guided not by habit but by a conscious sense of the past—by precedent, thoughtfully considered." He continues later, "As an artist I frankly write about what I like in architecture: complexity and contradiction. From what we find we like—what we are easily attracted to—we can learn much of what we really are."

It would be impossible to discuss Robert Venturi's writing without mentioning his famous response, "Less is a bore," to modernist Mies van der Rohe's dictum, "Less is more." This was Venturi's way "to make the point that modern architecture had become too simplistic. Venturi is an architect whose work cannot be categorized; to him, there is never a single solution. Lest anyone try to pigeon-hole him as a postmodernist, he declared that he was practicing modern architecture, and paraphrased his own words earlier about Main Street, "the modern movement was almost all right." emphasizing his close affinity to the basic tenets of modernism, while still giving importance to human use, memories, comfort and entertainment. Venturi has made it possible to accept the casual and the improvised in the built environment.

In his first book, Venturi declared, "Architects can bemoan or try to ignore them (referring to the honky-tonk elements in buildings) or even try to abolish them, but they will not go away. Or they will not go away for a long time, because architects do not have the power to replace them (nor do they know what to replace them with), and because these commonplace elements accommodate existing needs for variety and communication. Architecture is evolutionary as well as revolutionary. As an art it will acknowledge what is and what ought to be, the immediate and the speculative."

Venturi's early professional work was in the office of Eero Saarinen, where among other projects, he worked on the design of the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center. He also worked in the offices of Louis I. Kahn and Oscar Stonorov in Philadelphia. One of his first projects to be built that captured the attention of the architectural community was a house for his mother in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1989, it received the AIA's Twenty-five Year Award as a design of "enduring significance that has withstood the test of time." Scully described it as, "Disarmingly simple after the spatial antics of late Modernism, its plan...is based on a symbolic conception rather than upon one that is purely spatially abstract."

Robert Venturi's wife, Denise Scott Brown, is an architect, planner, author, educator. She has been a partner in the firm since 1969 and his collaborator in the evolution of architectural theory and design for the past 30 years. She is noted for bringing particular attention to the relationship of architecture, planning and social conditions, and is primarily responsible for planning, urban design and architectural programming.

Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour collaborated on another book, published in 1972, "Learning from Las Vegas," a further exploration of urban sprawl and the suburbs in relation to their architectural theories. A collection of their writings was also published in 1984, "A View from the Campidoglio: Selected Essays, 1953-1984."

In one of the essays in the latter collection, Robert Venturi confessed, "Alvar Aalto's work has meant the most to me of all the work of the Modern masters. It is for me the most moving, the most relevant, the richest source to learn from in terms of its art and technique. Like all work that lives beyond its time, Aalto's can be interpreted in many ways. Each interpretation is more or less true for its moment because work of such quality has many dimensions and layers of meaning." With a characteristic Venturi human, humorous touch, he added, "But Aalto's most endearing characteristic for me as I struggle to complete this essay, is that he didn't write about architecture."

In one of his essays in "A View from the Campidoglio," Venturi says, "When I was young, a sure way to distinguish great architects was through the consistency and originality of their work...This should no longer be the case. Where the Modern masters' strength lay in consistency, ours should lie in diversity."

Renzo Piano ( 1937 - ) Laureate Pritzker Prize 1998

Piano is the twenty-first architect in the world and the second Italian to become a Laureate. The first being the late Aldo Rossi who was honored in 1990. Renzo Piano was born into a family of builders in Genoa on September 14, 1937. His grandfather, his father, four uncles and a brother were all contractors, and he admits, he should have been one too, but instead chose architecture. Yet he declares that his architecture reflects an influence from growing up in a family of builders.

His idol is Filippo Brunelleschi (1377 - 1446), the sculptor and architect of that great marvel, the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. Piano says that Brunelleschi "studied the mechanism of the clock so that he could apply it to a system of great counterweights which in turn was used to raise the beams for the dome of the Florence cathedral."

He studied architecture at the University of Florence and Milan Polytechnic, graduating from the Milan Polytechnic in 1964. During his studies he was working under the guidance of Franco Albini, and also spent time on the construction sites of his father, a builder. Between the years 1965 and 1970 he set up Studio Piano, and with the support of his father, he experimented with lightweight structures, collaborating at various periods with Marco Zanuso in Milan. During this period he met Jean Prouvé, a friendship which was to have a profound influence on his work. In 1981 he formed the Renzo Piano Building Workshop with offices in Paris and on the coast west of Genoa, between Voltri and Vesima. Perched on the rocks and surrounded by the sea, it is half rock, half ship, and in fact, the place is called Punta Nave: Ship Rock. "Here I find calm," says Piano, "silence and concentration - all things that are essential to my personal way." Now he also has offices in Osaka, Japan, and in Berlin.

Renzo Piano is a man whose work is reinventing architecture in projects scattered around the world - from a Mixed Use Tower in Sydney, Australia to the mile-long Kansai Air Terminal on a man-made island in Osaka Bay, Japan to the master plan for the reconstruction of Potsdamer Platz in Berlin or the Beyeler Foundation Musuem in Basel, Switzerland.

Even this skip around the globe does not indicate the full range or enormous output of this prodigious architect. Renzo Piano's projects include not only buildings that range from homes to apartments, offices to shopping centers, museums, factories, workshops and studios, airline and railway terminals, expositions, theaters and churches; but also bridges, ships, boats, and cars, as well as city planning projects, major renovations and reconstructions. He is even a television star of a program on architecture.

His first important commission was in 1969 to design the Italian Industry Pavilion at Expo '70 in Osaka. In 1971 with Richard Rogers, who although born in Florence was English, they entered and won the international competition for the Georges Pompidou Center (also known as Beaubourg) in Paris. Other projects followed. The Menil Collection museum in Houston, Texas; the 60,000 seat football stadium built for the 1990 World Cup in Bari, Italy; and the multi-functional complex of the giant Fiat factory at Lingotto near Turin, Italy.

When Constantin Brancusi died and left all his work to the French state, Piano was given the task of rebuilding Atelier Brancusi on the square of Centre Pompidou. IBM called upon Piano to provide them with a Traveling Pavilion to visit 20 European cities to convey the marvels of new technology. The Piano solution was made up of 34 arches, each consisting of six pyramidal elements of polycarbonate. When assembled, it was 48 meters (154 feet) long and six meters (20 feet) high

To celebrate the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America, Genoa organized the Columbus International Exposition which Piano took on as a project. "This was a great opportunity," says Piano, "to rescue the historic city from decay."

After many pleadings from Padre Gerardo, he consented to build a church in San Giovanni Rotondo. It is Piano's concept that the Padre Pio Pilgrimage Church will "spring out of the stone of the mountainside. Walls, parvis, supporting arches, and covering roof will all be made of a local stone. The main span of over 50 meters (over 150 feet) will perhaps be the longest supporting arch ever built out of stone." A gently sloping courtyard will be capable of holding up to 30,000 people; another 6,000 could go inside the church.

In addition to the Pritzker Architecture Prize, Piano has won many too numerous to mention. Among them are the Compasso d'Oro Award, Milan, Italy (1981), Legion d'Honneur Paris, France (1985), Cavaliere di Gran Croce from the Italian Government (1989), the American Academy of Arts and Letters Honorary Fellowship (1994), Premio Michelangelo in Rome, Italy (1994), Art Prize of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany (1995), and the Praemium Imperiale, Tokyo, Japan (1995).

The works of Renzo Piano are so extensive that it would take many books (and has) to adequately describe the various projects. But mention must be made of some other major works still in progress: a new Mercedes Benz Design Center, in Stuttgart, Germany; a new Auditorium for Rome which consists of three separate concert halls with capacities of 2700, 1200 and 500 seats; a mixed use tower for offices and residences in Sydney, Australia; and a new master plan for the renovation and expansion of Harvard University Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  

Enrico Bombieri (1946 - ) University of Pisa, Fields Medal 1974

Enrico Bombieri was awarded a Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians held in Vancouver in 1974. The award was made for his major contributions to the study of the prime numbers, to the study of univalent functions and the local Bieberbach conjecture, to the theory of functions of several complex variables, and to the theory of partial differential equations and minimal surfaces. Bombieri like a number of other mathematicians, became interested in mathematics at a fairly early age. At 13, for example, he was studying a textbook in number theory.

He later studied with G Ricci in Milan and then went to Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied with H Davenport. First among Bombieri's achievements is his remarkable theorem on the distribution of primes in arithmetical progressions, which is obtained by an application of the methods of the large sieve. Bombieri applied his improved large sieve method to prove what is now called "Bombieri's mean value theorem", which concerns the distribution of primes in arithmetic progressions.

In 1966 Bombieri was appointed to a chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa. He began to become interested in problems that De Giorgi and his school of geometric measure theory were working on at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. They were interested in Plateau type problems for spaces of more than 3 dimensions. Working with de Giorgi and Giusti, he proved in 1969 that for n 8 there is a minimal hypersurface with an essential singularity.

Bombieri has been described as having demonstrated an ability to quickly master essentials of a complicated new field, to select important problems which are accessible, and to apply intense energy and insight to their solution, making liberal use of deep results of other mathematicians in widely differing areas. The breadth of his mathematical knowledge is clearly visible to those who know him and his work. He is also a fine writer of mathematics, and his lectures are recognized for clarity which increases with the subtlety of the mathematical idea being explained. His versatility and strength have combined to create many original patterns of ideas which are both rich and inspiring.

Bombieri was elected a foreign member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1984. Bombieri now works in the United States. In 1996 he was elected to membership of the National Academy of Sciences. The citation for him reads:- Bombieri is one of the world's most versatile and distinguished mathematicians. He has significantly influenced number theory, algebraic geometry, partial differential equations, several complex variables, and the theory of finite groups. His remarkable technical strength is complemented by an unerring instinct for the crucial problems in key areas of mathematics.