Antonino Zichichi

Zichichi was born in Trapani, Sicily on 15 October 1929. After graduating from the Ximenes classical high school in Trapani, he obtained a degree in physics from the University of Palermo. He collaborated on several discoveries in the field of sub-nuclear physics and worked in numerous research laboratories such as Fermilab in Chicago and CERN in Geneva, where in 1965 he led the research group that first observed the antideuteron, simultaneously with an American team from the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron at Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 1963, he founded the Centro Ettore Majorana of Erice, dedicated to scientific culture. From 1978 until 1980, he served as President of the European Physical Society. In 1979, during the election of the new Director-General of CERN, pressure from Italy in his favour caused a clear rift between Italy and other Member States, and in the end, with 12 votes against, Zichichi's candidacy was rejected in favour of the German candidate Herwig Schopper. In 1986, he became director of World Lab, an association that supports scientific projects in third world countries, founded in 1973 by Isidor Isaac Rabi and Zichichi himself. Zichichi was an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Bologna. He was president of the World Federation of Scientists, an organization concerned with the fight against planetary emergencies. In 1982, with P. A. M. Dirac and Pyotr Kapitsa, he drafted the Erice statement. Zichichi gave the opening talk at the four-day international symposium Subnuclear Physics: Past, Present and Future held in 2011 in Vatican City. Zichichi talked with Pope John Paul II about the responsibility of the Roman Catholic Church in the case of Galileo Galilei, playing a role in the public request of forgiveness issued by the Pope in October 1992. He was repeatedly critical of astrology and of the theory of evolution, which he considered to lack sufficient scientific evidence and a mathematical model capable of describing phenomena and making future predictions of events not yet known. Zichichi died on 9 February 2026, at the age of 96. ==Honours and assignments==