Abstract
It is a nice summer’s day; the sun is shining in the Sicilian sky. On Mount Antennamare, which looks out over the strait and the city of Messina, the perfume of oregano permeates the calm air. A Lambretta’s buzz gets closer, as it emerges from around a corner. Two young men are riding it; one is driving, and the other looks distracted and is wearing a Basque beret. They talk, joke, leave the Lambretta, and proceed on foot. They discuss chess matches, they joke about the differences between “Sicilians” and “Continentals,” they talk about the Don Mommo restaurant where you can eat for two liras, they contemplate Sicily’s perfumed oregano and maybe also the visionary project to span the Messina Strait with a bridge. At one point, the young man with the beret has a nervous tic, twitches suddenly, and begins talking about soap bubbles. Soap bubbles. They a favorite childhood pastime; everyone knows how to make one, with a plastic jagged-edged ring and some water mixed with detergent. For a child, soap bubbles are a question of instinct and practice, of the skill in knowing how much and how hard to blow, but for a mathematician they are a phenomenally complex topic. Ennio De Giorgi, wearing his beret, explains all of this to Ferruccio De Stefano, the friend who is driving the Lambretta.
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Notes
- 1.
A Lambretta is an Italian-made scooter similar to a Vespa.
- 2.
An Etruscan vase can be found in an exhibit at the Louvre in Paris depicting children playing with soap bubbles. Many artists have painted similar scenes, for example, the French J.S. Chardin, in the seventh century.—S. Hildebrandt & A. Tromba, The Parsimonious Universe, Springer Verlag (1996).
- 3.
An expression that De Giorgi used in his ICM presentation in Warsaw (see Chap. 19).
- 4.
Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau (1801–1883) taught at Gand University in Belgium.
- 5.
This property of surface tension derives from electrostatic molecular forces. Surface tension is a property of liquids and also determines the shape of drops of water. Water has a high surface tension, i.e., it tends to form drops. The addition of tenso-active substances such as detergents reduces the surface tension and allows bubbles to form.
- 6.
Karl Hermann Amandus Schwarz (1843–1921). Was born in Hermsdorf (now Jerzmanowa in Poland).
- 7.
Jesse Douglas (1897–1965) was an American mathematician, winner of the Fields medal when it was first issued in 1936. Tibor Radó (1895–1965) was a Hungarian mathematician.
- 8.
Richard Courant cited by S. Hildebrandt and A. Tromba, The Parsimonious Universe, Springer Verlag (1996).
- 9.
D. Triscari, 2007.
- 10.
F. De Stefano, Lecce, November 2007.
- 11.
T. Franzoni, Pisa, 2 July 2007.
- 12.
E. De Giorgi, Scienza e Fede, La Cittadella (Assisi 1982).
- 13.
D. Triscari (2007).
- 14.
Strangely neither knew about the other, even though they both were very good friends with De Giorgi and were in contact with his family.
- 15.
The acronym stands for Allied Military Government Occupied Territory.
- 16.
This is also because many lecturers went to Sicily only for career advancement, to then leave after a few years. F. De Stefano (Lecce, November 2006).
- 17.
F. Bassani (Pisa, 8 February 2007).
- 18.
A. Chiffi (11 November 2007).
- 19.
F. Bassani (Pisa, 8 February 2007).
- 20.
See Chap. 2.
- 21.
Transferring De Giorgi to the Scuola Normale was not an easy thing. A. Faedo wrote (A. Faedo, “How Ennio De Giorgi joined the Scuola Normale,” Annali Sns. Cl. Sc. 4 25, 1997): “In 1958, when he [De Giorgi] won the competition, the only chair in the Science classes at the Scuola Normale was taken by a physicist and the University of Pisa did not have any vacant chairs either. So Ennio went to Messina, but I promised myself to call him to Pisa as soon as the occasion presented itself. A couple of years later, because of the successes in nuclear physics, a new law was passed ensuring that for the following 5 years, 15 chairs would be reserved every year for science faculties in Italian universities. I was immediately able to obtain one for Pisa University, where I had become chancellor, but it turned out to be harder to obtain one for the Scuola Normale, because Carlo Miranda, director of the Institute of Mathematics at the University of Naples, claimed that the Scuola Normale did not have the right to a chair, only having a class but not a faculty in science. I managed to convince the minister Gui that it was only a formality, so I was able to obtain the chair for the Scuola Normale and immediately offered it to Ennio”.
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Parlangeli, A. (2019). Oregano from Sicily. In: A Pure Soul. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05303-1_7
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