ANDra 1963 when Antonino Zichichi RHe ealized his dream to Erice: to combine science and peace. The Majorana Centerwhere scientists around the world have a place to speak and confront each other on the most innovative discoveries. And collaborate together to thwart planetary emergencies.
A revolutionary school
In the 1963 The Berlin Wall has been standing for two years to separate the Soviet block from the western one, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Visit Berlin, Martin Luther King pronounces his famous speech I have a DreamAntonino Zichichi inaugurates The first school of subnuclear physics of the Center of Scientific Culture Ettore Majorana. There they meet Nobel prizes and researchers from all over the worldwithout divisions, and dialogue with post -university students in turn international on the most relevant scientific discoveries. An open dialogue, an interview, to make the most innovative inventions available to the younger ones with a revolutionary learning formula. No academic conferences, but a collaboration dialogue. With the ambition to do Science and peace the allies in guaranteeing the common good.
Antonino Zichichi’s dream
The convent of San Domenico headquarters of the Ettore Majorana Foundation in Erice.
Born in 1929, in Trapani, physicist And scientific popularizer ItalianAntonino Zichichi specialized in the field of the physics of elementary particles, Working at the Formilab in Chicago and CERN in Geneva. There little more than thirty years old conceived the idea of founding a school where thephysics humans and fresh graduation boys could dialogueoffering even extraordinary human meeting opportunities, able to overcome political blocks. In 1965 he became director of the group of research who observed antimatter for the first time. At that time he found himself in the right place and at the right time to give concreteness to what was the dream of many scientists. The progress of scientific research, on a path of peace. And not as a tool to impose an autocratic domain on peoples. Or possibly to destroy the world with new weapons of deadly power. The fear of collaborating in something shocking, such as the atomic bomb, was the one that seems to have pushed Ettore Majorana to disappear. And just a young Sicilian physicist, a pupil of Fermi, disappeared in nothing in 1938, the center of Erice is dedicated
The bet for peace
Antonino Zichichi, with the tie in the center, to the abbreviation of the Erice Manifesto, in 1963.
His fortune, says Zichichi in an interview 60 from the foundation of the Majorana center, is to have beenthe pupil of Paul Blackett. Paul Blackett was one of the most important scientists of his time, Nobel Prize for Physics in 1948. He fought against the construction of the British atomic bomb. And he pressed why Great Britain helped the scientific and technological development of its former colonies. It was the start of a prestigious career, with leading positions: ordinary of physics higher from 1965 to 2006 at the Faculty of Sciences of theUniversity of Bolognapresident of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics from 1977 to 1982. A great popularization activity, in newspapers and on television. When Erice became synonymous with international relaxation. And Zichichi won his battle to combine science and peace more and more strictly.
The meeting in San Domenico
Antonino Zichichi in Erice for the 60th anniversary of the Ettore Majorana center. @Mariza D’Anna.
Twenty years after the foundation of the School of Scientific Studies higher than Erice, the Ettore Majorana Foundation Vara another extraordinary initiative: the one to do explicitly of science an instrument of peace. Present The Erice manifesto, In August 1982. And therefore after Antonino Zichichi and his collaborators realized that in a moment of great instability, and in front of the many world emergencies, Scientists could help politicians make the right decisions. “Even then each of us lived on a mattress made of ten thousand kilos of chopped,” recalls Zichichi, 40 years after that event. So Together with Paul Dirac Nobel Prize Nobel Prize, Epiotr Leonidovic Kapitza, Nobel Prize Nobel Prize, deprived of Stalin of freedom for not putting themselves at the service of Soviet studies on the Bomba H, signed the Erice manifesto. to the Institute Blackett San Domenico di Erice. In the document the three call scientists to responsibility. Remembering that science must be at the service of man not of nations and that they must allow the exchange of information between the researchers. The same document It was signed in the following years by 100 thousand scientists. Again, science and peace. In 2023, an addendum, will expand the role of scientists to the management of planetary emergencies, From the availability of the water, to the pandemic crisis.
The pact is renewed every year
Sixty years and more of history in the old photos of the Ettore Majorana di Erice center.
I am Over 130 schools launched in sixty years of activity. One of which ninety still active. Also this year the sold out courses years in advance, They inaugurated on April 7th and continue to succeed the autumn. A feverish concentration, which brought 140 thousand students, 158 Nobel prizes who – at 2023, sixtieth of the Foundation – transferred their knowledge to the most young researchers, thousands of professors who voluntarily made their contribution, and did it for free. It is called scientific volunteering and gives the meaning of highly successful activity. Today reference point for scientists around the world. So in addition to physics and science schools too Seminars that today go under the name of planetary emergencieswithout students but with scientists who worked with the various governments, here we think about how to advise the rulers of the world on what are the emergencies the pandemics for example. Wars, cyber security, the safety of water supply, a green energy that can support the development of the less developed countries.
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