Antonino Zichichi

Antonino Zichichi (* October 15, 1929 in Trapani, Sicily ) is an Italian physicist and non-party politician in nuclear and elementary particle physics worked. He is known as founder of the science center " Centro di Cultura Scientifica Ettore Majorana ", Erice, Sicily (1963).

Zichichi worked on many well-known accelerator laboratories like Fermilab near Chicago or at CERN near Geneva. He was a professor of physics at the University of Bologna, which appointed him in 2006 to Emeritus. In 1963 he founded the Summer School of Theoretical Physics in Erice, Sicily, who enjoyed a very good reputation internationally. 1977 to 1982 he was president of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics ( Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare ) and supported in the same period energetically building the neutrino underground laboratory at Gran Sasso. Zichichi would also almost became director of CERN, but the pressure exerted by the Italian government pressure led to a backlash, so instead Herwig Schopper was elected in 1981, which led to a diplomatic upset in Italy, which threatened to cease funding.

In the Italian public, he is best known as Wissenschaftspopularisator through many books, newspaper articles and television appearances. As a devout Catholic, he represents it decided the view that faith and science are compatible. In this context, for example, his biography of Galileo " Galileo, Divin Uomo " has been criticized for trying to figure Galilei as a deeply religious man, who had revoked for this reason his theses. There were also public controversy in the 1990s about the mathematician Piergiorgio Odifreddi, which also led to lawsuits ( Odifreddi gave in 2003 a book of criticisms of Zichichi out with the title " Zichicche ", a play on words in Italian ).

He is president of he co-founded " World Federation of Scientists" and is considered as a skeptic of global warming.

In November 2012 Zichichi was appointed by Rosario Crocetta in the regional government of Sicily as Head of the Department of Cultural Heritage and Sicilian identity.

In 2001 he was awarded the first Premio Enrico Fermi and 2007 the Bruno Pontecorvo Prize.