Chapter V: The City Student
Via Reversella and the Middle School Years, 1951-1954
My mother's decision to enroll me in the middle school on Via Reversella, in the heart of Ferrara, was strategic. Despite our limited resources, she understood that education would be my pathway out of the constraints that had trapped previous generations of our family. Those three years of early adolescence would introduce me to two worlds that would shape my intellectual development: the rigorous world of mathematics and the complicated world of human relationships.
Via Reversella placed me among the children of Ferrara's middle class - families with aspirations, resources, and social connections that my own family lacked. I learned to navigate this environment carefully, forming friendships both at school and at the Parish of the Madonnina near our modest apartment on Via Palmieri. My religious involvement was more social than spiritual; Pietro's rationalist influence had inoculated me against genuine faith, and my mother's own skepticism meant that our church attendance was primarily a form of social camouflage necessary for her work with small bourgeois families.
The Mathematical Awakening
It was during these middle school years that I first encountered serious mathematics, and the experience was revelatory. Numbers and equations seemed to speak a language I had been waiting my whole life to hear - precise, logical, unambiguous. My rapid progress caught the attention of both Pietro and my mother, who decided to invest in private mathematics tutoring despite our financial constraints. This decision would prove transformative.
The mathematics tutor was a friend of Pietro's who lived near the Ferrara prison on Via Piangipane. I learned much later that this elderly gentleman had been a professor of engineering mathematics at the University of Bologna for many years. To us students, he was simply "il maestro" - a demanding teacher who set a pace that few could maintain. Several classmates who started the tutoring sessions with me eventually dropped out, unable to keep up with the rigorous schedule he imposed.
But I thrived under this pressure. I had the intoxicating sensation of truly understanding algebra - not just memorizing procedures but grasping the underlying logic that made everything work. I was fast, accurate, and increasingly confident in my mathematical abilities. This generated what I now recognize as one of my first intellectual illusions: the belief that I possessed a genuinely mathematical mind. It would take years to understand the difference between competent manipulation of mathematical tools and true mathematical creativity.
Chapter VI: The House on the Water
Summer Sanctuaries at Baura, 1951-1961
Our poverty meant that traditional vacations were impossible, but Pietro and Maria Concetta offered something far more valuable: summers at their rented house in Baura, a small agricultural community outside Ferrara. This house, with its connection to the irrigation system that fed the surrounding farmland, became my childhood paradise and my first laboratory for understanding how human intelligence could shape the natural world.
The Water Management Station
The house had been built as the residence for the manager of a water distribution node - a critical point in the irrigation network that brought life to the Padana valley. A large collection basin gathered water that was then distributed through a complex system of channels and gates to the surrounding fields. By the early 1950s, water management had been centralized, and the Consorzio Gestione Acque rented the house to Pietro. For us children, it was a marvel of engineering made playground.
The early 1950s were still a time when the waters ran clear and abundant with life. Fish, frogs, and aquatic plants created an ecosystem that was both beautiful and fascinating to young minds hungry for understanding. My sister Sonia and I spent entire days around the basin and channels, sometimes joined by older neighborhood children who taught us to fish for eels and catfish with spears - a skill we never quite mastered but pursued with endless enthusiasm.
The house held another treasure that would prove even more influential than the irrigation system: the library of Federico, the young hydraulic engineer who had lived there in the 1920s and early 1930s. Federico had died young of tuberculosis around 1935, and his father, a well-to-do physician from Ferrara, had left the house exactly as his son had inhabited it when Pietro began renting it in 1947.
Federico's Legacy: A Library as Time Capsule
Federico's library contained at least a thousand volumes, with a heavy concentration in mathematics, physics, engineering, and natural sciences. For a thirteen-year-old boy hungry for knowledge, it was an intellectual treasure trove. Pietro, despite lacking formal scientific education, recognized the value of these books and encouraged my exploration. His knowledge came from experience rather than study, but his enthusiasm for learning was infectious. Together, we spent countless hours in that library, with Pietro sharing his practical wisdom while I absorbed theoretical knowledge from Federico's carefully curated collection.
It was in Federico's library, under the guidance of Pietro and with direction from "il maestro," that I first attempted to study linear algebra at age thirteen. The books were sophisticated, intended for university-level engineering students, but my mathematical confidence was high, and my curiosity was boundless. Those summer afternoons, surrounded by the sound of flowing water and immersed in mathematical abstractions, represented a perfect fusion of intellectual challenge and natural beauty.
My other grandmother, my mother's mother, lived just 1.5 kilometers away - a twenty-minute walk through the countryside. My maternal grandfather Leonardo had died in 1938, three years before my birth, so I knew that side of the family only through stories and the careful visits we made on foot to my surviving grandmother. The contrast between Pietro's rational, systematic approach to life and my maternal grandmother's more emotional, traditional worldview gave me early exposure to different ways of understanding and organizing experience.
Chapter VII: The Daily Journey
Ferrara to Rovigo: Five Years of Commuter Education, 1956-1961
The decision to send me to the Istituto Tecnico Provinciale in Rovigo was born of pragmatic calculation. Pietro and my mother, assessing our family's limited resources and uncertain future, concluded that professional training would provide more security than classical education. Ferrara lacked comparable technical institutes at the time, so Rovigo became the destination for what would become five years of grueling but formative daily commuting.
The journey from Ferrara to Rovigo and back required two to three hours daily, including travel to and from the train stations. This regimen began when I was fourteen and continued until I was twenty - years when most adolescents are exploring independence and social relationships. Instead, I developed the discipline of a professional commuter, learning to use travel time for study, reflection, and the careful observation of the adult world I was slowly entering.
Industrial Chemistry: Pietro's Strategic Choice
Pietro selected industrial chemistry as my specialization because Ferrara's economy included several chemical industries that offered employment opportunities for technical graduates. This practical consideration reflected his systematic approach to life planning - identify the goal, analyze the available paths, choose the most efficient route. What he couldn't have anticipated was how much I would enjoy the intellectual challenges of chemistry and how naturally I would adapt to the technical subjects that formed the core of the curriculum.
One of the most unusual aspects of my education at Rovigo was finding myself in a mixed-gender class studying industrial chemistry. This was uncommon for the time, and the experience of learning alongside young women proved both academically stimulating and socially educational. We formed study groups that tackled challenging subjects like technical mechanical drawing and analytical chemistry laboratory work with a collaborative spirit that I found both efficient and enjoyable.
Three friends from my Ferrara middle school had made the same choice to study at Rovigo, and we became a tight-knit group of daily commuters. However, the demands of the journey proved too much for some. After a couple of years, several of my Ferrara friends abandoned their studies, unable to sustain the physical and mental demands of daily long-distance commuting combined with challenging technical coursework. Only my best friend Cesare and I persevered to graduation.
The studies themselves came easily to me. Technical drawing, analytical chemistry, and even the more abstract theoretical subjects seemed to build naturally on the mathematical foundation I had developed during my middle school years. My confidence grew with each academic success, reinforcing my belief that I was intellectually suited for scientific and technical work.
Chapter VIII: Philosophy and First Love
Intellectual and Emotional Awakening with Alessandra
It was at Rovigo, amid the practical studies of industrial chemistry, that I encountered the two intellectual passions that would complement my scientific interests for the rest of my life: literature and philosophy. The technical curriculum included substantial humanities coursework, and I found myself drawn particularly to philosophical texts that offered systematic approaches to understanding reality - approaches that resonated with the logical thinking I had learned from Pietro and refined through mathematical study.
Alessandra: Brilliant Mind, Beautiful Soul
Among my classmates was Alessandra, a young woman whose intelligence and energy made her a natural leader in our study groups. She was brilliant and full of life, with a particular gift for literature and philosophy that complemented my strength in mathematics and science. What began as academic collaboration gradually deepened into something more profound - an intellectual friendship that carried the intensity of first love.
Together, Alessandra and I tackled philosophical works that were probably beyond our years but not beyond our ambition. We read Schopenhauer's "The World as Will and Representation" and Plato's "Sophist," both in Italian translation. Looking back, I believe we understood significant aspects of Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy, though our grasp of Plato's dialectical method was probably less secure. What mattered was not perfect comprehension but the method itself - the way philosophical thinking could illuminate questions that science and mathematics couldn't address.
The relationship with Alessandra was transformative in ways that extended far beyond academics. For the first time, I experienced intellectual partnership with someone whose mind worked differently from mine but with equal power and intensity. She challenged my assumptions, introduced me to ways of thinking that were more intuitive and artistic than my systematic approach, and showed me that intelligence could be expressed through literature and philosophy as powerfully as through mathematics and science.
Our shared exploration of philosophical texts created an intimacy that I mistook for romantic love. The intensity of intellectual discovery, combined with the normal emotional turbulence of adolescence, created feelings that seemed profound and lasting. I began to imagine a future that included not just academic partnership but life partnership with someone who understood and shared my passion for ideas.
The end of this relationship taught me one of my first harsh lessons about the difference between intellectual compatibility and emotional availability. I learned later that even during our closest period of philosophical collaboration, Alessandra had been romantically involved with another classmate whom she eventually married. The discovery that my feelings had not been reciprocated forced me to confront the gap between my emotional hopes and social reality.
Chapter IX: The Gateway to the Future
Graduation and the Path to Ispra, 1961
In 1961, I graduated from the Istituto Tecnico Provinciale with full marks, a achievement that validated years of disciplined study and daily commuting. The diploma in industrial chemistry represented not just academic success but a ticket to possibilities that had seemed impossible for a boy from a broken family in post-war Ferrara.
The opportunity that would define my next phase came through a scholarship from the CNEN (Comitato Nazionale Energia Nucleare) for specialization in nuclear engineering, with training to be conducted at Ispra on Lago Maggiore, about forty kilometers northwest of Milan. This scholarship offered not just advanced technical training but also the possibility of enrollment at the State University of Milan - a prospect that would have been financially impossible for my family.
The transition from provincial technical school to nuclear research facility represented more than a geographical move. It was a leap from the constrained world of post-war provincial Italy to the international, cosmopolitan environment of cutting-edge scientific research. At Ispra, I would encounter colleagues from across Europe and America, work with technologies that represented the future of human civilization, and discover whether my intellectual abilities could compete at the highest levels of scientific inquiry.
As I prepared to leave Ferrara for Ispra, I carried with me the lessons learned during those formative years: Pietro's systematic approach to problem-solving, the mathematical confidence developed through rigorous training, the philosophical curiosity awakened by literature and deepened through collaboration with Alessandra, and the emotional resilience forged through family dysfunction and academic challenge.
The boy who had learned to navigate political tensions in post-war Ferrara, who had found refuge in Federico's library among the irrigation channels of Baura, who had sustained five years of daily commuting to pursue an education his family could barely afford, was about to become a man in the sophisticated world of international nuclear research. The foundations were solid; the question was whether the structure built upon them would prove worthy of the effort invested in its construction.
The next chapter begins at Ispra, where the provincial boy would encounter the wider world of science and begin the transformation into the researcher who would eventually contribute to European pharmaceutical regulation...