The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics goes to an Italian. It was assigned to Giorgio Parisi, theoretical physicist of the La Sapienza University of Rome and of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics, as well as vice president of the Accademia dei Lincei.
Parisi was awarded for his research on complex systems. He shares the Nobel Prize in half with Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann, who have received recognition for their research on climate models and global warming.
So far 20 Nobel Prizes have been awarded to Italians since the origins of the prize. Of these, 12 are scientific: 5 for Physics, 6 for Medicine and one for Chemistry. Among the 20 winners there are only two women: the Sardinian Grazia Deledda, for Literature in 1926, and Rita Levi Montalcini, for Medicine 60 years later, in 1986.
The last Nobel Prize to a researcher born in Italy is that of 2007 to Mario Capecchi, active in the USA, but to go back to an Italian researcher who has done most of the work in Italy we must go back to 62 years ago, to the Nobel Prize for Chemistry awarded in 1959 to Giulio Natta.
"I'm happy, I didn't expect it, but I knew there could be possibilities", commented Giorgio Parisi. Who also laughed a bit: "I was taken by surprise, but when I saw that it was a number that began with 4, therefore from Northern Europe, I said to myself: 'it may be the right time'. It's true that at first I was afraid it was a joke, but then it was immediately clear that it wasn't. "
The Minister of University and Research, Maria Cristina Messa, speaks of a “historic day for Italy”. "Saying 'congratulations' to our new winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics is even an understatement: Giorgio, with his life dedicated to science and research, with the passion that has never abandoned him, has been over the years, and continues to to be today, teacher and example for many young people, researchers and others ”.
"Research requires original ideas - Mass continues -, freedom, rigor, discipline; it requires knowing how to pursue one's goals with highs and many lows, but it gives opportunities and hope to the world, especially to the new generations, teaches how to use methods that push towards comparison and allow us to arrive at useful syntheses. Today, too, is the lesson that Giorgio Parisi gives us ".
WHO IS GIORGIO PARISI - 73-year-old theoretical physicist, he has dedicated his career to frontier topics: from the Higgs boson to the behavior of complex systems such as neural networks, the immune system or the movement of groups of animals, with underlying the perfect formations of birds in flight and whose rules could also explain complex human behaviors, such as electoral trends or stock market turbulence.
Most of his work took place in Italy: he made numerous decisive contributions in the fields of particle physics and statistical mechanics, fluid dynamics and condensed matter, up to supercomputers.
Born in Rome on August 4, 1948, Parisi graduated in physics at Sapienza in 1970 under the guidance of another great Italian physicist, Nicola Cabibbo, with a thesis on the Higgs boson.
(Unioneonline / L)