Flavio Argentesi

Chapter X: The Science Fiction Dream

From Chemical Plants to Nuclear Energy, 1961

The decision that would reshape my entire life began with a notice posted on the bulletin board where our high school graduation results were displayed. In those final months at Rovigo, a small group of us had formed a reading circle devoted to science fiction - a genre that was gaining popularity in Italy through translations of major American and British authors and through successful films like "The War of the Worlds" and "Forbidden Planet."

These readings, combined with my studies in chemistry and physics, had ignited a powerful fascination with nuclear energy. The atom represented not just scientific achievement but the very future of human civilization. When I saw the CNEN (Comitato Nazionale Energia Nucleare) scholarship announcement, it felt like destiny calling. Here was a chance to participate in the most advanced scientific research of our time, to work with technologies that seemed to emerge directly from the science fiction novels we had been devouring.

Even today, I'm not entirely sure why I made that choice. Something in me felt different, restless, eager to test myself with something risky but fascinating like nuclear physics and engineering in the early 1960s. The conventional path felt too small, too predictable for the person I was becoming. I applied to the CNEN competition and was called to Milan for an interview that went well enough to earn me the scholarship.

I was offered a choice between Rome, at the CNEN central laboratories, or Ispra, at the nuclear research center that Italy had just donated to the newly established European institution for nuclear energy, Euratom. Rome would have been a more difficult location for me, and my mother would never have accepted it. Pietro made me understand that Milan and the prospect of Euratom within the framework of the emerging European Community offered a richer scenario of possibilities than a Roman agency. Looking back sixty years later, I must say that he saw very clearly even then.

Chapter XI: The European Laboratory

Ispra and the Birth of Modern Europe, 1961-1962

Arriving at Ispra was like stepping into the future. Here was a vast nuclear energy research center covering almost every aspect of atomic science, employing 2,000 people from all the countries of the European Community, where French was the primary working language. For a young man of promise from a fascinating but still very provincial city like Ferrara, this was a revelation of what the modern world could become.

Initially, I occupied the bottom rung of the social and functional hierarchy, partly because I was still with CNEN, which maintained management of the Ispra I research reactor that Italy was to transfer to Euratom only at the end of 1962. The CNEN scholarships operated on a completely different scale from Euratom personnel salaries, so we fifteen CNEN scholarship holders lived quite spartanly compared to the environment surrounding us.

I rented a room in Ispra village, about two kilometers from the center - a distance I had to walk every day. My room had no heating, and the winters in Ispra were cold. But spring and summer were beautiful, and Lake Maggiore at Ispra was still clear and swimmable. We were authorized to use the equipped beach for Euratom personnel and could also use the Euratom Club House, which offered bar and restaurant services along with various entertainment like ping-pong tables and tennis courts.

I played ping-pong reasonably well, a skill that would prove more important than I could have imagined. One evening, when we scholarship holders were engaged in a small ping-pong tournament, I met Selma for the first time - a German woman a few years older than me who cheered me on as a mediocre ping-pong player. We struck up a friendship, and I discovered that Selma was a childcare specialist who worked in the nursery that had just been inaugurated for Euratom personnel.

Chapter XII: First Love

Selma and Deep Connection, 1962-1965

What began as casual friendship with Selma quickly deepened into something more profound. We started spending more time together, and as she put it, our "chemistry" was very compatible. Soon our relationship became closer, and we fell in love with each other deeply, in every sense - emotionally, intellectually, and passionately. Selma became my first great love, a relationship that would last several years and open new perspectives on life.

Through Selma, I encountered parts of the world that I had previously experienced only superficially. Her approach to nature, to animals, to the relationship between humans and the natural environment, offered me new ways of seeing, though the transformation of my worldview would come gradually through many influences over the years rather than from any single relationship.

Not long after we met, Selma left the apartment that Euratom had provided near the center and rented an apartment in Cerra di Laveno with a magnificent view of Lake Maggiore. For someone who came from the flat expanse of the Padana plain, these were magical landscapes. The entire Varese pre-Alpine region seemed like a different planet - mountains rising directly from lake shores, forests that changed color with the seasons, a complexity and beauty of landscape that my previous experience had never prepared me to appreciate.

Living with Selma in the apartment overlooking Lake Maggiore, I experienced for the first time what it meant to create a domestic space based on mutual affection and shared interests rather than family obligation and social necessity. We were building something together - a relationship that combined emotional intimacy, intellectual curiosity, and passionate physical love in ways that my dysfunctional family background had never modeled.

The relationship with Selma lasted several years, during which I completed my nuclear engineering training and began my transition into the international scientific community. Our love was deep and transformative, offering me my first experience of complete emotional and physical intimacy with another person.

Chapter XIII: The University Years and Scientific Mentorship

Milan, Margaret Merlini, and the Path to Mathematical Modeling, 1964-1973

Around 1964, after my transition from CNEN technical agent to Euratom employee following the direct takeover of the Ispra I reactor, I decided to enroll at the University of Milan, taking advantage of Euratom's openness to university education for its employees. After careful evaluation, Pietro's pragmatism prevailed, and I chose the faculty most feasible for my conditions as a full-time working student, considering attendance requirements and laboratory participation. I chose General Biology, also because Euratom's Biology Division offered me the possibility of an experimental thesis at Ispra in radioecology with Margaret Merlini as supervisor.

My work with Margaret focused on radioecological modeling - tracing the movement of radioactive isotopes through food chains and ecological compartments. This research required sophisticated mathematical approaches to model transfer coefficients, bioaccumulation factors, and ecosystem dynamics. Margaret taught me not just the techniques but the scientific thinking behind them - how to formulate hypotheses, design experiments, and interpret complex data patterns. Her international perspective, gained from her work at Savannah River, exposed me to research standards and methodologies that were at the forefront of the field.

Under Margaret's guidance, I developed my first real competence in biological modeling, learning to translate ecological processes into mathematical equations and to validate models against experimental data. Her approach was demanding but inspiring - she insisted on precision in both experimental design and mathematical formulation, while encouraging creative thinking about biological mechanisms. The thesis work we conducted together became the foundation for my later career in mathematical biology and computational modeling.

However, this formative period came to a tragic and abrupt end. Shortly after I completed my thesis work, Margaret was severely injured in a car accident that left her seriously disabled and forced her to abandon her laboratory and research career. This sudden loss of my mentor and the research path we had been developing together forced me to completely change direction in my professional development.

Giulio was an extraordinary scientific leader who quickly became my mentor in mathematical modeling. The years working with Giulio, from my thesis completion until 1986 when he left the European Commission to take up a professorship in numerical analysis at the University of Parma, were fundamental to my formation in computational mathematics and computer science. It was during this phase that I built the research and project management capabilities that would enable me to construct the subsequent phases of my career and life.

It was Giulio who organized my sabbatical year at the University of Reading in the UK, introducing me to John Jones and Prof. Curnow. This sabbatical became much more than scientific training - it was a life-changing experience that opened new worlds of thinking and research methodology. The British approach to mathematical modeling and statistical analysis provided me with tools and perspectives that would prove invaluable throughout my career.

The years between 1965 and 1970 were difficult for me personally, as I found myself still confronting all the problems of a dysfunctional family. My sister entered the path that would lead her years later to suicide, and my mother found herself alone, weighing on her children, having wasted her life with a man of the worst kind - one she had chosen to live with despite his being already married to another woman. This was a black hole that I was never able to clarify with my mother, and it weighed heavily on my entire life.

The effort to emerge from that state was enormous, and I succeeded only through great willpower, taking refuge in study and thanks to some new friendships that around 1969 led me, in a strange way, to my second great love with Luisa. Between Selma and Luisa, I had other superficial relationships that helped me emerge from depression, but they weren't enough. Only with Luisa's arrival did things return to proper order, allowing me to graduate with full marks and find the motivation to continue with a doctorate in Biometry and Medical Statistics.

My degree allowed me to enter the managerial career track at Euratom, which with the merger of the European Community executives became the European Commission, making me a Commission official of managerial rank - a notable change.

The sabbatical at Reading was an experience not only of scientific formation but also of life and opening to the world. There I met Caroline, whom I would marry perhaps too hastily - she was completing a Master's in Linguistics. The beginning, as in all things, was excellent, but then the weight of your past life returns to your shoulders with all its burden. Our marriage lasted the usual seven years before the gravitational field of my original family, with the weight of its history, collapsed our relationship and led to divorce.

Chapter XIV: Villa Mirasole and Life's Complexities

Property, Marriage Crisis, and New Love, 1980-1983

The end of my relationship with Luisa was, as always, caused by the state of my family of origin. My mother was increasingly dependent on me, not only economically (which would have been a minor problem at that point in my career) but especially emotionally and relationally. My sister, increasingly moving toward chaos, had a daughter with an old lover and managed to get herself fired from the managerial position she had reached at an important cosmetics company in Milan. I settled my mother in a comfortable apartment in the Ispra village.

In 1980, three years before our eventual divorce, Caroline and I made what seemed like a significant commitment to our future together by purchasing Villa Mirasole in Gavirate on Lake Varese. This was a beautiful property featuring a villa built in 1919 and surrounded by a magnificent park with mature trees. The villa represented our attempt to create a stable domestic life, a place where we could build something lasting together. The property was substantial enough to require a mortgage, but my position at the European Commission made this manageable, and we both saw it as an investment in our shared future.

For a while, things seemed to stabilize, except for my sister who continued to navigate chaos with another child, this time from her husband. But everything went into crisis around 1980 when my mother, then in her seventies, suffered a major cerebral stroke that left her disabled and became a crushing problem for both family and professional life. This medical emergency would prove to be the decisive factor in the breakdown of my marriage with Caroline.

After a long period of rehabilitation, my mother recovered some autonomy but was unable to live alone. For a while, I tried to manage the situation with caregivers, but it didn't work effectively. The constant stress of managing my mother's care, combined with the emotional weight of her condition, threw me off balance again and put enormous strain on my marriage. Caroline had no understanding or patience for my family difficulties, and the distance between us grew increasingly wide.

In 1983, the marriage collapsed completely. Caroline asked for a divorce, which I granted. It wasn't I who requested the divorce - she made that decision when it became clear that my family responsibilities were not going to diminish. We divided our common assets, and I kept Villa Mirasole with its mortgage obligations. It hadn't been a marriage with truly strong bonds in any sense anyway, and Caroline's lack of empathy for my situation during my mother's crisis revealed fundamental incompatibilities that perhaps had always been there.

Fortunately, we had married in the UK, which made the divorce process relatively quick and straightforward. We divorced there as well, avoiding the complications that an Italian divorce might have entailed. Caroline, paradoxically, after requesting the divorce herself, could not accept that I had remarried another woman when that eventually happened. The world, as Pietro had taught me (and he had left me by then), is difficult to understand.

This period marked the end of one phase of my life and the beginning of another. The boy from Ferrara who had escaped family dysfunction through education and European opportunities had become a man who could no longer escape family responsibilities, even as he built new relationships and advanced in his professional career. The tension between personal autonomy and family obligation - a theme that had defined my entire life - reached a new equilibrium through the partnership with Joan and the acceptance of my role as caregiver to my aging mother.

Joan's arrival represented not just new love but a new approach to life's complexities. Where Caroline had seen my family responsibilities as obstacles to our happiness, Joan saw them as part of who I was and found ways to integrate them into our shared life. Villa Mirasole became not just my home but our home, a place where we could care for my mother while building our own relationship on foundations of mutual understanding and support.

By 1983, I had completed the transition from promising young scientist to established professional, from bachelor to twice-married man, from son fleeing family dysfunction to adult managing family crisis. The mathematical modeling skills I had developed under Giulio's mentorship, the international connections I had built, and the emotional resilience I had cultivated would soon prove essential as my career moved toward the regulatory science work that would define my final professional decades.