Prof. Giuseppe Marino, full professor in mathematics at the University of Calabria, has been recently awarded as one of the mathematicians most influential in the world by the society Thomson Reuters.
This result is particularly relevant for the scientist: “because they have selected me without a real competition. They have built an algorithm to measure not only the amount of citations but their quality. In other words, 3 to 4 different publications were cited by more than 200 different studies. This parameter is quite high in mathematic field compared to other research areas”.
Prof. Marino unveiled: “I love mathematics since ever. When I was child, I was spending my time counting…everything. I was counting steps, things, km made by cars. I could not see how much a thing was beautiful…I was just counting. When I grew up, I tried to avoid this habit but it is still difficult!”.
Thus, mathematics for Prof. Marino is a true love which is a typical feature of scientist belonging to this area. In the Italian schools and academies, indeed, mathematics is still a controversial issue: somebody fully loves it, while somebody else simply detests it. Prof. Marino claims: “People that do not understand mathematics is because they do not understand the grammar principles of language behind it: the meaning of conjunctions in Italian is different respect that of the same conjunctions in mathematics. This is why people stack and do not go forward in mathematics. When I start explaining this philosophical aspect of mathematics to students in the colleges and at universities, they follow my lessons better and mathematics becomes easy. Moreover, do not forget that Italy has a humanistic culture: this often means that people are <<proud>> to say that they do not understand mathematics!”.
To became a good researcher it is fundamental to follow a great school and Prof. Marino recognized two important mentors for his life: Prof. Cimmino and Prof. Espedito de Pascale: “After graduation in mathematics I was in Rome at the <<Istituto di Alta Matematica>> where I started working on functional analysis and <<Hilbert spaces>> with Prof. Cimmino. Hilbert is, surely, one of the greatest mathematics of our century, from University of Gottigen in Germany. Prof. Cimmino during the lesson about Hilbert spaces, suddenly, started crying. He was touched because he was in Germany working with Hilbert when he defined these principles for the first time... He felt like Hilbert’s son, then me… I am Hilbert’s grandson, since I am spiritual son of Prof. Cimmino”. “Regarding Prof. Espedito de Pascale I lived at his personal and professional school, here at University of Calabria for many years, since the beginning of my academic career. He is a great person and scientist. If I think about the best mathematician in the past, in my mind appears Eulero, while at present the Japanese Wataru Takahashi deserves this honor because he MADE mathematics since 1960.”.
The main accusation for mathematics is to be too far from reality but Prof. Marino explained simply what is functional analysis and what are the potential applications for human life: “ Functional analysis studies the properties of group of functions: it is a research area very broad; my group is involved in studying approximation algorithms. In other words, these find application in each field where you wish to have, at the same time, a minimum of something and a maximum of something else. As example: you need an approximation to decide for how long you need to have a red light at the traffic lights in a city, to manage the stocks of a supermarket or of a hospital, to minimize the expense of energy..etc. Recently, with a Chinese group we are studying a way to optimize the area reached by radiations during anti cancer therapy. This with the aim to minimize the size of healthy tissue victim of radiation side effects.” It is not a secret that research in Italy is challenging but Prof. Marino is firmly convinced of his decision to stay here: “ I have several scientific collaborations worldwide, in Taiwan, in Alabama, in China, in Poland. Some of them invited me to go abroad but I decided to stay in Calabria. I strongly believe that we cannot leave Calabria, otherwise nobody remains here and this region simply disappears, even though it is true that in Calabria and, in general, in Italy everything is much difficult because resources are scarce. Recently, I got an invitation from an the King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia. At the beginning I though it was a joke of some friends but it was not and now I am collaborating with researchers of this modern University. The direction of the institution invites the most aknowledged scientists worldwide to improve the importance and the know-how of the University. They spend a lot of money in ameliorating quality of research…in Italy we move in the opposite direction!”.
Prof. Marino concluded the interview with a recipe for Italian research: “ We have good students and I love teaching. I take care of their education. My best result in my scientific life is my group of young and motivated researcher. I have chosen them because they were brilliant students and I helped them growing up in research. Now they are independent and great scientists. The main problem of Italian University is that we leave our youths: we educate them, we teach and transmit our experiences during university lessons, PhD programs and then, we let them going far away in USA, Saudi Arabia or somewhere else because we do not have enough economic resources to offer good positions in Italy. This is a suicide politics: we are like a father that dies without sons.”
Prof. Nicola Leone, full professor in Computer Science and director of department of Mathematics and Computer Science at University of Calabria, represents a great example of successful ideas in both basic and applied research as demonstrated by numerous awards: in 2009 at Providence (NY, USA), Nicola Leone received the eminent