L'Italo-Americano

L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2021 www.italoamericano.org 6 NEWS & FEATURES TOP STORIES PEOPLE EVENTS highs and the many lows. B u t r e s e a r c h a l s o g i v e s opportunities and hope to the world, especially to the younger generations. It tea- ches methods that encoura- g e d i s c u s s i o n a n d h e l p r e a c h u s e f u l s y n t h e s i s . Giorgio Parisi has been tea- ching us this, too." H i s s t u d e n t s a t L a S a p i e n z a , e l e c t r i f i e d a n d excited, hung a banner on t h e b a l c o n y a t t h e D e p a r t m e n t o f P h y s i c s , w h i c h h a s b e e n P a r i s i ' s home during many years of work. They connected with h u m o r t h e N o b e l P r i z e ' s return to Italy after 37 years with last summer's tormen- tone, dedicated to the coun- try's extraordinary succes- ses in sport, starting with our victory at the European Soccer Championship: "It's c o m i n g R o m e ( s i c ) . Congratulations, Giorgio!" Through the years, Parisi w o n s o m e o f t h e m o s t i m p o r t a n t i n t e r n a t i o n a l physics and science prizes, i n c l u d i n g t h e B o l t z m a n n Medal ("for his fundamen- tal contributions to statisti- cal physics, and particularly f o r h i s s o l u t i o n o f t h e mean-field theory of spin glasses"), the Dirac Medal, the Lagrange Prize, the Max Planck Medal for "his signi- f i c a n t c o n t r i b u t i o n s i n theoretical elementary par- ticle physics, quantum field theory and statistical phy- sics," and the Wolf Prize. H e t a u g h t a t C o l u m b i a U n i v e r s i t y a n d t h e É c o l e N o r m a l e S u p é r i e u r e i n Paris, but he always came b a c k t o R o m e . W h e n h e r e c e i v e d t h e C l a r i v a t e Citation Laureates 2021 - which uses the impact of quantitative research publi- cations to identify the aca- demics with the strongest influence on the internatio- nal scientific community - Parisi declared: "This is a collective award, one that should go to a whole com- munity: it goes also to the more than 500 collabora- tors who had fun with me trying to reveal the myste- ries of nature." A g r e a t s u p p o r t e r o f s c i e n c e , P a r i s i h o p e s h i s N o b e l P r i z e w i l l h a v e a p o s i t i v e e f f e c t o n I t a l i a n research: "I hope it can be a n i m m e d i a t e , v i s u a l demonstration that science, in our country, works well." The problem, he continues, is another one: there is no generational change and no funding. This prize proves Italian science is in good s h a p e , b u t a l s o t h a t i t i s a g i n g . I t m e a n s i t n e e d s young researchers who can take the place of those who are getting older, year after year. It is paramount that Italy becomes a welcoming country for researchers." P a r i s i , b o r n i n R o m e i n 1948, leads the Accademia dei Lincei, one of Europe's oldest and most prestigious scientific institutions and is also president of the Classe d i S c i e n z e F i s i c h e , Matematiche e Naturali. He continues, stating that: "Research is crucial for our f u t u r e , a n d i t ' s e s s e n t i a l that it gets adequate fun- d i n g i n I t a l y ; " h e h o p e s "this is a good moment to invest in research, because it means investing in the younger generations." P r e s i d e n t o f t h e Consiglio Nazionale delle R i c e r c h e ( C N R ) M a r i a Chiara Carrozza collabo- rated with Parisi on several occasions, most recently at the Nanotec lab in Lecce, w o r k i n g o n c o m p l e x systems. She agrees with h i m w h e n i t c o m e s t o research: "We often com- p l a i n a b o u t , r i g h t l y I ' m a f r a i d , t h e m a n y i s s u e s Italian research must face day after day, from lack of h u m a n a n d f i n a n c i a l resources to bureaucracy. But this prize is an extraor- d i n a r y p r o o f o f I t a l i a n research's excellence." What president Polimeni describes as: "An emotion difficult to translate into words, something immense, of which La Sapienza, the scientific community and o u r c o u n t r y m u s t b e proud," is the result of a career that started in 1970 w i t h a t h e s i s o n H i g g s boson, supervised by Nicola Cabibbo who, for his own w o r k o n p a r t i c l e s ( w o r k that opened up the way to the understanding of weak interactions), almost won t h e N o b e l . P a r i s i t h e n w o r k e d a t t h e I N F N ' s L a b o r a t o r i N a z i o n a l i i n Frascati, as a CNR member first (1971-1973) and then as a researcher (1973-1981). During this period, he spent time abroad: at Columbia U n i v e r s i t y i n N e w Y o r k (1973-1974), at the Institut d e s H a u t e s É t u d e s Scientifiques in Bures-sur- Yvettes (1976-1977) and at t h e É c o l e N o r m a l e Superieur in Paris (1977- 1978). H i s c o n t r i b u t i o n h a s b e e n d e t e r m i n a n t a n d w i d e l y r e c o g n i z e d i n a variety of fields of physics: particle physics, statistical mechanics, fluid dynamics, condensed matter, super- computer. He wrote articles about neural networks, the i m m u n e s y s t e m , a n d t h e movement of animal grou- p s . H e w o n t w o E R C ( E u r o p e a n R e s e a r c h Council) advanced grants in 2010 and 2016, and he is t h e a u t h o r o f m o r e t h a n 600 academic articles and conference papers. B u t h e a l s o l o v e s Calvino's fairytales, and he wrote some himself, for his 4-year-old grandson. The Children, the Fly and the Wolf or The Little Girl, the Witch and the Wizard are available online, where they find space among academic publications and scientific research. He also loves tra- d i t i o n a l G r e e k d a n c i n g because, his children say, he may be good at physics, but he still likes to learn s o m e t h i n g d i f f e r e n t a n d challenging: a sign of his eclecticism and curiosity, d o m i n a n t t r a i t s o f h i s s c i e n t i f i c p e r s o n a l i t y . I n fact, it's chaos that fascina- tes him and drives his origi- nality: the shape of clouds; glass molecules, that under a microscope look in disar- r a y b u t , i n t r u t h , f o l l o w t h e i r o w n o r d e r ; b i r d s w a r m s w h o g a t h e r a n d s w a y i n t h e s k y l i k e a n e n o r m o u s , c h a o t i c m a s s , but have their own organi- zation. Familiar, sponta- neous, confused, unpredic- table shapes, but only appa- rently, because they, too, have rules. And the most extraordinary thing is that he interpreted data without any research model to fol- low. When he found out about the Nobel Prize, Federico Ricci Tersenghi - professor of theoretical physics at La Sapienza and Parisi's col- league for 25 years - explo- ded in front of his students " a s i f w e w o n t h e W o r l d Cup." He explains: " We can summarize Giorgio's funda- m e n t a l c o n t r i b u t i o n t o science this way: he under- stood how you make order in disordered systems. But these systems - which are v e r y n u m e r o u s i n n a t u r e and can be found in many different contexts, like bio- l o g y , n e u r a l n e t w o r k s , finances - all need Giorgio's theory to be explained. So, his theory may seem diffi- cult but it can be applied practically in many fields." Continued from page 4 Giorgio Parisi at the celebrations organized in his honor at La Sapienza University (Photo: Sapienza Università di Roma/Stefania Sepulcri)

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