Research: Parisi and Accademia Lincei celebrate the great physicist Marcello Cini

Remembering the figure of Marcello Cini and reconstructing his scientific, intellectual and political trajectory, reflecting on the relevance of his thought. This is what the Marcello Cini conference between Science and Criticism is proposing, which is held today, October 18, at the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in via della Lungara 10. “Marcello Cini was a fundamental figure in Italian culture both for his activity as a scientist, both for his reflections on science and for his activities between science and politics, science and economics, addressing the problem of how the world is changing while the concepts used to analyze it are dated “, explains Giorgio Parisi, Nobel laureate for Physics and president of the Physical Sciences class of the Accademia dei Lincei, among the organizers of the conference. “Cini also represented a great example of interdisciplinarity because he dealt with the most varied topics, his figure and his interests cannot be confined to a single field, and in this he is very similar to our Academy, made up of two classes ( Physical Sciences and Moral Sciences) which by statute undertake to enhance the interdisciplinary nature of knowledge, essential for knowledge ”concludes Parisi. Cini, who passed away in October 2012, was a singular figure in Italian physics. Born in Florence in 1923, he graduated in Turin first in engineering and then in physics. In her twenties she had participated in the resistance, an experience that will greatly affect his life. Brilliant theoretical physicist, he had been called by Edoardo Amaldi to hold the chair of Theoretical Physics in Rome starting from 1957. His scientific and political activity was manifold. He joined the Communist Party at the end of the 40s starting a political and cultural commitment path that will last a lifetime. In 1967 he was a member of the Russell Tribunal on Human Rights, visiting Vietnam during the war. In 1970 he was expelled from the Communist Party and was one of the founders of the Manifesto Group. Cini’s activity in theoretical physics continued throughout the decade of the 1960s. In 1960 he was the only Italian theorist invited to the great Rochester conference in the USA. Starting from the 70s he devoted himself to the study of the fundamentals of quantum mechanics, obtaining a prestigious recognition from the journal Nature which in 1983 dedicated an article to him. His other major interest was the analysis of scientific production in its social dimension, becoming an important reference, even if sometimes controversial, for those who had this side of science at heart. He was Vice President of the Italian Physics Society, Director of the Institute of Physics in Rome, Director of the Seminar of History of Science of the Faculty of Science of the Sapienza University (1987-1990), Director of Cirms, the Interdepartmental Research Center in Methodologies of Sciences, body of the Sapienza to which researchers of the most various disciplines belonged (1993-1998). He was Director of the magazine “SE-Scienza Esipendenza”. Cimi was a member of the Scientific Council of Lega Ambiente and among his publications on general themes, we remember Ape and the Architect (1976) republished in 2011, A lost paradise (1994), Dialogues of a bad teacher (2001) , The Prometheus supermarket: science in the age of the knowledge economy (2006). He received the 2004 Nonino prize “To an Italian master of our time”. At the end of his academic life Marcello Cini was appointed Professor Emeritus.