Giorgio Piccardi

The words Isaac Newton used to describe his own work are also well suited to the 

I do not know what I may appear to the worid but to myself I seem to have been only like a 

Giorgio Piccardi was, in some respects, an eclectic chemist, since his career embraced many research fields. An intellectually lively personality, he continually found new research areas in all that surrounded him. His mind was a source of new hypotheses and ideas that carried him forward along with many of his colleagues, but Piccardi himself never stopped the process of construction and demolition, demonstrating a critical acumen without rival. His true nature, which was respectful of life but deeply secular and agnostic, could be said to have been equally directed toward all the wonders of Creation. 

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G. B. Kauffman and M. T. Beck, Self-deception in science the curious case of Giorgio Piccardi , Specul. Sci. Technol., 1987,10 (2), 113-122. 

Manzelli, P. Costa, MG. (1994). I segreti dell acqm. L opera scientifica di Giorgio Piccardi. Roma... 

In 1942, after 18 years of intense effort, the Florentine chemists still had not succeeded in extracting even a firaction of a milligram of florentium, and so, another of RoUa s co-workers, Giorgio Piccardi, convinced his director to retract the news of its discovery, which he did by nestling it in a long document outiining the history of rare earth research at Florence in a minor Vatican journal [160]. 

Giorgio Piccardi s scientific research extended for a period of about fifty years, and ended the year of his death in 1972. His career can be divided into two major parts. The first part comprises his physical chemistry research which continued until about 1940 the second period can be described as research on the influence of environmental variables on non-traditional systems of chemical, physical and biological evolution, which fall outside of thermodynamic equilibrium. Of this last period, which continued for three decades, much has been written, both good and bad, while very little has been said about his research in physical chemistry. It is for this reason that the present book seeks to redress this lack of homogeneity in the study of the work of Professor Piccardi, recalling his valuable initial work in physical chemistry. 

Fig. 5.4 Giorgio Piccardi photographed at work in his laboratory during the year of his retirement, 1966. Kind gift of his daughter, Maria Stella, to one of the authors...

Thanks to Giorgio Piccardi, the study of interfacial systems both in the curriculum and in research, came to be regarded important in the field of physical chemistry. Indeed, he directed his school towards studying interfaces and surface... 

Fig. 5.5 Giorgio Piccardi, Self-Portrait. Courtesy of the family of Giorgio Piccardi...

Giorgio Piccardi s father, Ludovico, widowed toward the end of WWI, returned to live alone in his large Villa di CapaUe, near Florence. In his late old age, he moved in with his younger son, Giacomo (1901-75), father of Giovanni Piccardi (b. 1929), a weU-known analytical chemist at the University of Florence. Ludovico died at almost 82 years of age on 13 September 1944. 

The changing conditions following the outbreak of WWII obliged Giorgio Piccardi to return to Tuscany where he pursued his research at a war-tom university with a temporary appointment. After the war, in the academic year 1946-47, he was called to become chair of physical chemistry at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Mathematics, and Physics at the University, a position that he occupied until 1965. 

Kauffman GB, Belloni L (1987) Giorgio Piccardi, Italian physical chemist and master of the sun. J Chem Educ 64 205-208... 

Walther Hermann Nemst, the great German scientist, Nobel laureate in Chemistry, and father of the Third Law of Thermodynamics, had two Florentine disciples Luigi Rolla and Giorgio Piccardi. The latter became professor of physical chemistiy at the University of Florence. Piccardi had studied fluctuating phenomena well before Ilya Prigogine (1917-2003). His best disciple, later successor, was Enzo Ferroni who, upon Piccardi s retirement, was promoted to the Chair of Physical Chemistry at the Universily of Florence. Ferroni had also served as director of the Department of Chemistiy and Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Universily of Cagliari, Sardinia. 

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