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Professor Paolo Budinich


Paolo Budinich was born on 1916 in Veli Losinj (Lussingrande), then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, in a very respected family of educators and ship commanders (Simone Budinich, Antonio Budinich, etc.). In his own words everybody in Veli Losinj said that in the house of Budinich even the cats could read ("a casa dei Budinich sa leger anca i gati")!

In 1918, the Budinich family moved to Trieste where Paolo's father taught high school history and geography. He later transferred to the Liceo scientifico where he also taught philosophy. Paolo graduated from that same school in 1934. Unfortunately, the family did not have the financial means to pay for his university education, so Paolo continued his studies by working in the "Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa" with professor Leonida Tonelli. He was paid little and barely survived. Nonetheless, he graduated in 1939 with a thesis on the broadening of spectral lines.

Prof.Paolo Budinich

That same year, he was afforded the opportunity to go to sea. He accepted a teaching post on the cruising ships of the Scuola Amerigo Vespucci which was part of the Academia Navale di Livorno. He thus taught physics while cruising all over the Mediterrannean. Even the Admiral enjoyed his lectures about the new physics and so very often invited him to sit at his table.

In 1940, Italy entered World War II. Paolo was immediately mobilized, but was not very enthusiastic about the war. Moreover, he spent a part of the war in a submarine that he did not like. Captured by an English corvette, he became a prisoner of war and was taken first near London and later to a POW camp in the United States. Life in the prison camp was not bad since the prisoners had an Italian cook who made fresh tagliatelle daily, they had books to read, and Arturo Toscanini brought them his recordings. Every evening, they had an organized concert. The war ended and in the fall of 1945 Budinich returned to Trieste, and soon afterwards he joined the Physics Institute of the University of Padua where he started to work intensively on problems of modern theoretical physics, like cosmic rays, particle physics, etc. In 1949, he married Ambra Vidich.

In 1951, Budinich went to the Max Planck Institute in Gottingen and worked with Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum mechanics. There, he evolved into an excellent theoretical physicist. In 1953 his first son Marco was born, and Paolo was offered the position of head of the Institute of Physics in Trieste. In 1954 came the opportunity to work with Wolfgang Pauli in Zurich and to broaden the links to Prague, Graz, Ljubljana, Budapest and Zagreb.

Paolo Budinich, made great strides and was instrumental in the founding and early development of many of Trieste's scientific institutions—from the launching of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in the 1960s to the creation of Laboratorio dell'Immaginario Scientifico in the 1990s.

Together with Abdus Salam, a physicist from Pakistan who later won the Nobel Prize in Physics, he is credited for founding the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in 1964 under the aegis of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and also for the Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA). He served as the Deputy Director of ICTP between its inception in 1964 and 1983.

Professor Budinich tells his story in an autobiography titled L'arcipelago delle meraviglie (The Archipelago of Wonders), published in 2001 by Di Renzo Editore in Rome, Italy. Apart from his personal remembrances, the book recounts the political battle leading to the creation of ICTP in Trieste as well as the early days of the Centre. In the concluding pages, Budinich writes about the reconciliation between science and philosophy and the capacity of mathematics to anticipate unknown physical realities—from antimatter to string theory. His many scientific achievements aside, Paolo Budinich has always had a passion for the sea and sailing, and has cruised all over the Adriatic Sea in his boat Aleph. Selected works of Prof. Paolo Budinich, together with reviews and interviews, related articles and a complete bibliography can be seen at:

http://www.istrians.com/istria/illustri/budinich

Paolo Budinich was awarded the 2003 Abdus Salam Medal at the ninth General Conference and 20th anniversary celebrations of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS).

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