Visiting Ambassadors

Hedayatzadeh Rozavi, Iran's Ambassador to Italy, recently visited the ICTP to discuss the possibility of wider cooperation between the Centre and the government of Tehran. The Ambassador told ICTP Director, Miguel Virasoro, that Tehran would like to increase the number of young researchers coming to study in Trieste through additional fellowships sponsored by the Iranian government. The arrangement would be similar to those the Centre currently enjoys with several other countries, including Argentina, China and India. About 50 Iranian scientists presently come each year to study at the ICTP.

Kalarickal Pranchu Fabian, India's Ambassador to Italy, also recently met with ICTP Director and the Head of ICTP Mathematics Section, M.S. Narasimhan, to discuss present and future partnerships between the ICTP and India's scientific community. The Ambassador was particularly interested in the role that the Centre has played in the training of young Indian scientists and how that role may be expanded in the future. Since 1986, some 250 Indian scientists on average have visited the Centre each year. That represents one of the largest national contingents of scientists within the ICTP.

TRIBUTE

Luciano Fonda, 1931-1998

Luciano Fonda, 67, a well-known Italian theoretical physicist and a driving force behind the ICTP since its inception, died on 21 July. He suffered a fatal heart attack while boating along the Adriatic Sea's Dalmatian coast southeast of Trieste. Born in Pula (then part of Italy, now part of Croatia), Fonda received his graduate degree in physics from the University of Trieste in 1955. He then spent several years in the United States at Indiana University in Bloomington and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. After brief stints at the universities of Palermo and Parma in Italy, he became a professor at the University of Trieste, where he also headed the Faculty of Sciences. A long-time consultant to the ICTP, Fonda's name will remain forever associated with the synchrotron laboratory "Elettra," located in Trieste's Area Science Park. After being its most ardent promoter, he served in a number of administrative capacities, including the facility's vice president. GianCarlo Ghirardi, who knew Fonda for more than 35 years, offers the following tribute to his friend and colleague.

I first met Luciano in the early 1960s after he returned to Italy to teach physics at the University of Palermo and then the University of Parma. You couldn't help be impressed by his boundless enthusiasm and capacity for hard work. I remember spending hours talking about physics and jotting down formulas on either scraps of paper in our office or napkins on the dining tables where we ate. Our collaboration began in Parma and moved north when we both took positions with the University of Trieste in 1963.

Luciano's fields of interest ranged from nuclear to solid state to particle physics. He was a master at quickly acquiring the skills necessary to use complex mathematical tools for addressing difficult problems in physics. After moving to Trieste, Luciano and I worked together for a little more than a decade. During that time, we wrote some 30 papers and collaborated on a textbook, Symmetry Principles in Quantum Theory. The book has been adopted for use in Ph.D. courses in universities worldwide.

In the mid 1970s, our careers went separate ways. Nevertheless, both we and our families remained close. By the early 1980s, Luciano was devoting a great deal of time to launching the synchrotron laboratory "Elettra," which virtually everyone agrees is largely a product of his wisdom, energy and commitment. A quarter century after I was fortunate enough to meet him, Luciano's enormous talents as a scientist and administrator were again on display. The truth is, these talents were always self-evident to those who befriended and worked with him. He was a moving force in the emergence of Trieste as one of Italy's prime scientific research centres. In fact, he served as director and then president of the University of Trieste's Consortium for the Development of the Physics Departments, the administrative body that owns the buildings which house ICTP's offices.

Despite all of his accomplishments, Luciano possessed uncommon warmth and humility. A man of inexhaustible vitality, his death came as a shock to all who knew him. I am sure that I speak for the entire scientific community in Trieste and throughout the world when I express my sorry for his loss, yet my delight for having been his friend and colleague for so many wonderful years.

GianCarlo Ghirardi
Director, Department of Theoretical Physics,
University of Trieste
Head, ICTP Associate and Federation Schemes

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