Personal tools
Log in

Skip to content. | Skip to navigation

INAF

Istituto italiano di astrofisica - national institute for astrophisics

Ciao
You are here: Home INAF News Farewell to Giovanni Bignami

Farewell to Giovanni Bignami

Great astrophysicist and former President of INAF and ASI, Bignami passed away suddenly while in Madrid where he was carrying out his research activities.

The Italian scientific community is in mourning for the loss of Giovanni Bignami, an internationally renowned astrophysicist and science writer and former President of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) and of the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The Italian scientist passed away suddenly while in Madrid where he was carrying out his research activities.

Born in Desio on 10 April 1944, Bignami was one of the most active and respected Italian astrophysicists. He took part in the design and construction of a number of scientific satellites and was involved in the 20 year long work that led to the understanding of Geminga, the first neutron star with no radio emission. A prominent member of theAccademia dei Lincei, Bignami was President of ASI and INAF, and was the first Italian President of COSPAR, the Committee on Space Research.

He was currently Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the IUSS in Pavia and was Chair of the Board of Directors of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project, the world’s largest and most powerful radio telescope, an array of thousands of radio antennas located in South Africa and Australia. An extraordinary science writer, Bignami was the author of a number of popular science books. An asteroid has been named after him: 6852 Nannibignami.

Source: ResearchItaly

Filed under: ,

GRB-SN Association within the Binary-Driven Hypernova Model

Sep 22, 2023

GRB-SN Association within the Binary-Driven Hypernova Model The GRB-SN association, probably the most constraining property of GRB theoretical models, is the subject of a new article by an ICRA-ICRANet collaboration, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal

The polyhedric scientist and his sharp tones

Sep 08, 2023

Tomaso Belloni passed away suddenly on August 26th. He was a leading scientist of the Italian astrophysics community and was well known internationally for his work on compact objects in the X-ray and gamma-ray bands

Farewell Krakow, see you in Padua for EAS 2024

Jul 14, 2023

Farewell Krakow, see you in Padua for EAS 2024 The annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society (EAS) ended today in Krakow, Poland. Next year, Padua will host the annual EAS meeting from 1st to 5th July 2024