Rome, 1 July. “I have decided to kill ‘Schrodinger’s cat’.” The feline protagonist of “TV films, cinema, printed on mugs and t-shirts, yet loved by former US president Barack Obama and Bill Gates and ‘censored’ in China despite my book being much celebrated. At the last Beijing Book Fair there were over 100 thousand people, I signed more than 500 copies”. Gabriella Greison, physicist, writer, theater actress, playwright, science communicator, journalist and TV presenter talks to Adnkronos about her adventure in China where she presented one of her latest works ‘I will kill Schorodinger’s cat’ (Mondadori edition).
“Written after the pandemic, my intent – he confessed – was to create something that had the scent of rebirth, to tell a story of resurrection. Like ‘Schrodinger’s cat’, protagonist of the Nobel Prize for Physics Erwin Schrödinger’s experiment, we too were alive and dead, at the same time, inside a metaphorical box. The experiment has become an interesting metaphor for living. Bill Gates and former President Obama appropriated it. When he was elected to the White House in his inaugural address he simply said, ‘the politician can be like Schrodinger’s cat until the voter gives you power.’
Enthusiastic about her trip to China, Gabriella Greison then added: “my book was translated by a large Chinese publishing house, I had an amazing welcome, they treated me like a great writer, I got to know a country that was open and interested in of everything that ‘lives’ outside its borders’. Of course I didn’t expect ‘censorship’ of a part of the book when I talk about the virus that started from China or the Dalai Lama visiting CERN, the largest particle physics laboratory in the world on the border between France and Switzerland. But China remains a great, very great country – continued Gabriella Greison – They are building a particle accelerator that will be 100 kilometers long, they want to beat CERN in Geneva. An exciting job for them. There is no doubt that they are at the forefront of everything”.
No fear of being attacked by animal rights activists for ‘killing a cat’, even if literary? “No, no attack at the moment – replied Gabriella Greison – My cat does not exist, it is imaginary, a mental experiment, it only exists in the laboratory of our brain, it is one of those experiments that has crossed the boundaries of science, nobody after all think of a real cat.”
Theater, cinema, essays, books, live entertainment. Scientific dissemination is changing in our country too, the relationship with the public makes the subject less difficult. “I created my own way of telling physics through stories,” he explained. “I followed the great storytellers, from Marco Paolini to Ascanio Celestini, I tried to emulate them. I ‘fish’ my stories from the 20th century. Stories of scientists who created our future, from Marie Curie to Enrico Fermi, we are in the second quantum revolution that is shaking up our lives. Not an easy path, mine,” he confessed. “The stereotype of the scientific disseminator until some time ago was different. Male, older and possibly always in front of a blackboard.”
A summer of dreams and projects yet to be realized for Gabriella Greison. “It’s true – she confirmed – There are still so many dreams to be realized, so many stories to tell. My summer tour has begun, 40 dates in two months, not only in Italy. And after the trip to China I dream of touring the United States like the greatest American rock stars”.
