Serena Dandini (photo by Gianmarco Chieregato).
C.‘is a new monument in Milan, finally dedicated to a woman. Indeed, as the Deloitte Foundation which promoted the project, is the first work of art on public land, in Milan and Italy, dedicated to a female scientist.
We hope it will be the first of a long series and we can only be grateful to the Municipality of Milan and to the Casa degli Artisti which, on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Margherita Hack they thought of paying homage to the beloved astrophysicist with a bronze statue of the Bolognese artist Sissi.
Margherita – or Marga, as her friends called her – would have been happy and would surely have given us a laughperhaps seasoned with a few words in toscanaccio, a dialect of origin which, although he had lived for many years in Trieste, he had never stopped attending to the delight of his interlocutors.
Hack for all of us was not only a great scientist but a courageous woman who has helped generations of young people to have self-confidence despite the difficulties that are still encountered today in our beautiful country if you want to embrace the path of research.
Women in particular, who have always been discouraged from taking up science subjectsin the figure of Marga they found a comet that continues to illuminate a path previously left in the dark: this is what the pioneers do and it is therefore important to remember them.
“Born in via delle Cento Stelle. Cats, bicycles and swear words: the whole galaxy of Margherita Hack ”by Federico Taddia (Mondadori).
And we have to thank Federico Taddia writer and TV author who, after giving us the podcast Marga, is now in the bookstore with Born in via delle Cento Stelle. Cats, bicycles and bad words: the whole galaxy of Margherita Hack (Mondadori) with beautiful illustrations by Marianna Balducci.
A book that can rightly be read from the age of nine and up he tells with true affection the free and disheveled existence of the first woman to direct an astronomical observatory in Italy.
Marga was rebellious, combative, opposed, disobedient, indomitable, proud and above all ironic, she loved cats and “her” Aldo, the man with whom she shared her entire life. Allergic to dogmas of any nature, she taught us to follow curiositythe only lighthouse to know “nature as it is made” and has never been afraid to express their opinions even when they went against any established authority.
It is precisely the great intellectual freedom that Marga has professed in any field that is the most important legacy she left us. A capital to be carefully preserved in these dark times.
All the articles by Serena Dandini.
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