About me

• I was born in Torino, Italy, in 1937; I graduated in Physics at the Universita' di Torino in 1959 with a dissertation on multiple pion production in high energy hadronic collisions under Gleb Wataghin's supervision.
• As a fellow of the Italian Institute of Nuclear Research (INFN) at the Turin University, in 1960 I started my research activity in theoretical physics with a brief incursion into axiomatic field theory. Then I was soon involved (together with Anna Maria Longoni) by Tullio Regge in an investigation whose goal was to develop the analytical properties of the elastic scattering amplitude in terms of energy and momentum transfer, within the complex angular-momentum approach put forward by Regge in his 1959 seminal paper.
• In 1963, I was granted a one-year NATO fellowship which brought me to the Ecole Normale Superieure at Orsay, France, where I spent a second year with a position offered by that Laboratory. There I started studying electron-nucleus processes with the aim of investigating the details of the scattering mechanism as well as the ensuing nuclear properties. These analyses were carried out with George R. Bishop, Guido Ciocchetti and Alfredo Molinari, among others.
• Then I got interested in weak interaction processes and neutrino physics so that in the Seventies and Eighties my research explored various aspects of electroweak properties. I shared some of these research paths with Chung Wook Kim, great expert in that field and a lifelong friend, whom I first met at the Johns Hopkins University where I spent the 1967-1968 academic year.
• While acting as a theoretical consultant to the INFN national committee responsible for planning experiments underground and in other instances not involving accelerators, I investigated phenomenological properties of possible processes with baryon number violation; more specifically, neutron-antineutron oscillation and double proton decay in nuclei.
• Towards the end of the Eighties I delved more deeply and systematically into astroparticle physics, with a particular focus for the dark matter problem; my interest was primarily centered on particle candidates: their properties, together with strategies for their direct and indirect detection. This research activity was carried out and made possible through collaboration with a number of highly talented and motivated young researchers; it is very rewarding for me to witness now their success in their subsequent brilliant academic careers. Our research group also enjoyed local collaborations with Vittorio de Alfaro and, internationally, with Venya Berezinsky (Gran Sasso Laboratory), John Ellis (CERN) and Pierre Salati (LAPTh, Annecy).
• My research activity was supported by numerous initiatives, shared with many colleagues, aiming at promoting interactions among researchers working in the rapidly developing field of astroparticle physics: international summer schools, doctoral schools, meetings. The most relevant initiative being the series of TAUP (Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics) conferences that I founded together with Angel Morales of the Zaragoza University in 1989. This series of biennial conferences has continued to develop since then and has been hosted by numerous international institutions around the world. A charming historical reconstruction of the first editions of TAUP (up to 2011) was given by Frank T. Avignone (University of South Carolina) at the TAUP 2011 conference banquet in Munich.
• My teaching activity at the University of Turin, where I obtained a chair in Theoretical Physics in 1980, was mainly devoted to theoretical physics as well as nuclear and subnuclear physics. In 2008, I retired from the University of Turin, although I continued lecturing on Big Bang physics at the Doctoral School for a while.
• At present, I mainly devote my activity to history of physics and science communication; I also participate in the scientific activities of the Accademia delle Scienze di Torino.