Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Edoardo Amaldi, 5 September 1908 - 5 December 1989

1991; Royal Society; Volume: 37; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1098/rsbm.1991.0001

1748-8494

Carlo Rubbia,

International Science and Diplomacy

Edoardo Amaldi died on 5 December 1989 in Rome at the age of 81. Typically Amaldi was at work; at 9.00 a.m. he had gone to the Accademia dei Lincei, of which he was the President, to give a welcome address at a scientific conference. He returned to work in his office and a little after 12 noon he had a totally unexpected heart attack in the lift of the Palazzo Corsini. He was rushed to the Hospital Santo Spirito but on arrival was found to be dead. Only three weeks previously on 13 November Amaldi had been at the inauguration ceremony of LEP, the new electron-positron collider at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva, where President Mitterrand of France had acknowledged Amaldi’s essential role in the rebirth of European physics in his official address. As recently as 31 October he had chaired the Conference on the Frontiers of Contemporary Physics at the Centre for Theoretical Physics at Miramare, Trieste, and the week before his death he met President Gorbachev for the second time - during the Russian President’s visit to the Pope - having led a delegation of Italian scientists to the International Forum organized by Gorbachev in Moscow in 1987. The energy, drive and enthusiasm that had been the hallmark of Edoardo Amaldi’s life - as a physicist who had been actively involved in the most important advances in physics from 1930 onwards; as an organizer who had been the catalyst for the resurrection of European science after World War II; as an inspirational teacher; as a man of peace; as a historian - never left him until the moment of his death.