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News from ICTP 110 - Monitor
Miramare Open
Day
On Saturday 18 September, ICTP and other scientific institutions
in and near Miramare Park organised their first Open Day for residents---young
and old---from Trieste and the surrounding region. More than 4000
people---that's 2 percent of Trieste's population---came to visit
and learn more about the world of science here in Miramare. In
addition to ICTP, other institutions participating in the event
included the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA),
the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), the University of
Trieste's Department of Physics, the Consortium for Physics, Fondazione
internazionale Trieste per il progresso e la libertà delle
scienze, Immaginario scientifico, the World Wildlife
Fund (WWF) Natural Marine Reserve, Miramare Castle Park and Parco
tropicale.
Open Day began with a welcome by ICTP director K.R. Sreenivasan
in ICTP's Main Lecture Hall. Piero Angela, Italy's most
renowned science television broadcaster, spoke on science, society
and the media. A roundtable discussion followed with Margherita
Hack, Edoardo Boncinelli and other researchers from
ICTP and SISSA. The topic of discussion was "The Scientist's
Job". Talks, movies, exhibitions, interactive experiments
and tours rounded out the day-long programme.
New Website
ICTP has launched a new website designed to be more informative,
user-friendly and attractive. There's also a new URL. It is www.ictp.it. Comments and suggestions
may be sent to pub_off@ictp.it.
Visit from China
More than 20 officials---all directors and deputy directors of science and technology institutes in China---visited ICTP on 16 July. Trieste was one of their main stops in a three-week tour of scientific institutions in Europe. The officials were eager to learn more about the management of ICTP and the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). Presentations by ICTP director, K.R. Sreenivasan, and TWAS executive director, Mohamed H.A. Hassan, were followed by a lengthy question-and-answer period.
IAEA General Conference
The International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) 48th General
Conference took place on 20-24 September 2004 in Vienna, Austria.
ICTP director K.R. Sreenivasan and staff members Claudio Tuniz
(left), Gallieno Denardo (third from left) and Brian Stewart (right)
represented the Centre. ICTP's exhibition emphasised the Centre's
long-standing collaboration with IAEA.
For additional information, see www.iaea.org.
Visits to EU and UNESCO
ICTP director K.R. Sreenivasan, accompanied by Claudio Tuniz, special assistant to the director, visited the European Union (EU) in Brussels in August to discuss potential avenues of cooperation between the EU and ICTP. Discussions focused on efforts to promote science in eastern and central Europe and potential initiatives for expanding scientific data collection both within Europe and the developing world. The director, accompanied by ICTP scientists Hilda Cerdeira and Marco Zennaro, also travelled to UNESCO headquarters in Paris to discuss possible initiatives to provide rapid internet access to major universities and research centres in developing countries where access remains difficult and slow. About 60 representatives from UNESCO member states, including the Italian ambassador Francesco Caruso, were present.
IN MEMORIAM
Francis H.C. Crick, who with James Watson discovered the structure of DNA, died on 28 July in San Diego, California. He was 88. The British-born scientist shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1962 with Watson for what is considered one of the greatest scientific findings in the 20th century. Crick was one of the distinguished speakers at the Symposium on Contemporary Physics held in June 1968 to celebrate the opening of the Centre's Main Building.
Francis H.C. Crick and Abdus Salam at ICTP in 1968
Joan Oro, a pioneer in the study of the origins of life and a frequent lecturer at ICTP's biennial conferences on this topic, died on 3 September. He was 81. The seminal discovery of his career took place on Christmas eve in 1959 in his laboratory when he synthesised adenine, a key component of DNA. Oró, founder and first director of the biochemical and biophysical sciences department at the University of Houston, Texas, USA, worked for the US National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) during the Apollo and Viking programmes.
Bryce DeWitt, Roland Blumberg professor of physics at
the University of Texas, Austin, and winner of the ICTP Dirac Medal in 1987, passed away on 23
September. He was 81. DeWitt was an internationally renowned scientists
best known for his studies on quantum gravity and gauge theory.
His name is associated with the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, which
provides the basis for quantum cosmology, and the Schwinger-DeWitt
expansion, which is widely used in the study of field theories
in curved space-time and string theory computations.
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