Abstract
The seniors reached the 20th question, but Grifo, perched on top of the closet, wasn’t budging. A feeling of unease was starting to permeate the crowd: never before had someone under interrogation managed to avoid being pelted with pails of water.
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Notes
- 1.
Life in Scuola Normale was about the students and was driven by their frat house antics. The most anticipated event of the scholastic calendar was the start of the academic year. S. Steffè remembers (Pisa, 7 February 2007): “In the freshman initiation ritual, students were questioned by the seniors. Freshmen were made to sit on top of a closet, with the seniors below, brandishing buckets full of water. If a freshman hesitated in answering they would refresh his ideas by soaking him with water.”
- 2.
For example, “is the number of atoms in a mole even or odd?”
- 3.
S. Steffè, Pisa, 7 February 2007.
- 4.
Schroeder is a character from the comic strip Peanuts, who is always playing his toy piano.
- 5.
E. De Giorgi was referring to the famous paradox of the tortoise and the hare, which was initially posed by Zeno and that was resolved a long time afterward, following the discovery of infinite series (i.e., the sum of ever smaller decimals).
- 6.
The College, dedicated to the humanist Alessandro d’Ancona (1835–1914) opened in 1971.
- 7.
G. Moruzzi, 14 February 2009.
- 8.
L. Carbone (20 December 2007). Carbone attended the Normale during the 1970s, but remembers that the prank was popular mainly during the 1960s.
- 9.
L. C. Piccinini (February 2007) and G. Moruzzi (14 February 2009).
- 10.
M. Miranda (email, 19 January 2007) confirmed by L. C. Piccinini (February 2007).
- 11.
N. Nidiaci, February 2007 and 3 January 2009.
- 12.
F. Colombini, Pisa, 12 February 2007.
- 13.
M. Galbiati, 14 February 2009.
- 14.
De Giorgi’s ad-libs were always original (see also Chap. 4) and amused his friends. For instance, one time he theorized that the library at the Scuola Normale should employ dogs to track lost books by the smell of the person who last filled in a lending form. M. Galbiati, 14 February 2009.
- 15.
M. Breiner (2007).
- 16.
M. Breiner, home video.
- 17.
Even G. Moruzzi remembers that De Giorgi, during that time, used to go with him on excursions organized by the Alpine Club that often took place in the Apuan Alps. “He was certainly a good walker”, comments Moruzzi (14 February 2009).
- 18.
L. C. Piccinini, February 2007.
- 19.
M. Breiner, private discussion. Breiner adds: “We had ‘championship games’ nearly every week at my home. The teams were always the same: E. De Giorgi and L. C. Piccinini, myself with P. Indelli, and S. Steffè with F. Pegoraro.”
- 20.
F. Mussi, M. D’Alema and M. Olivari are Italian personalities.
- 21.
A. Sofri, Il bello di un’equazione differenziale, Panorama (8 October 1998). The text follows thus: “[De Giorgi] was famous for being intolerant of studying, and of being able to reinvent ways to proceed further in researching a subject. It was said that, on meeting a student, De Giorgi used the first two or three questions to enable a reconstruction of the subject of the exam, the fourth delving into the subject matter, and the fifth going well beyond it, completely confusing the poor candidate he was interviewing.”
- 22.
M. Miranda in La matematica, vol.1, Einaudi (2007).
- 23.
F. Colombini (Pisa, 12 February 2007).
- 24.
Commemoration in the Bulletin of the Italian Mathematical Union (UMI), sect B (8) 2 (1999).
- 25.
A. Marino, Pisa, 6 February 2007.
- 26.
S. Spagnolo (Pisa, 6 February 2007).
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Parlangeli, A. (2019). His Name Was Grifo. In: A Pure Soul. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05303-1_12
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