Pisa, 2 July 2024 – The new appointment of the Pisan independent publishing review “A river of books in Cavallotti square”, this year on the theme “New views on Pisa, will take place Thursday 4th July as always at 9.15pm in Piazza Cavallotti in front of the Erasmus bookshop. This time we will have the third look at Pisa through the book of Anna Maria Gennai “Pisa. Walks with mathematical and physical curiosities” published by Felici Editore which will be the focus of the meeting which will be attended by the author, professor Rino Castaldifull professor emeritus of General Physics who participated for many years in the CMS experiment at CERN in Geneva and was director of the Pisa Section and member of the board of directors of the INFN (National Institute of Nuclear Physics), the professor Massimiliano Razzanoprofessor at the Department of Physics of the University of Pisa, writer with a master’s degree in journalism and scientific communication and Fabrizio Felicipublisher.
Is it possible to make the study of mathematics and physics enjoyable and make them a tool to strengthen one’s self-esteem? This was the challenge that motivated the teaching of Anna Maria Gennai, a graduate in Mathematics with an applied focus at the University of Pisa, who chose to be a teacher, for 28 years at the Liceo Classico in Pontedera. In the wake of this intent, Pisa Passeggiate con curiosità matematice e fisica was born, a collection of eight itineraries through the city with routes in which drops of science are instilled that spring from an alley, a church, a monument. A smooth and linear reading is enriched by rich end-of-chapter notes, where the author’s ability to clarify and explain even the most complex and specific aspects emerges.
Pisa is a city that has seen the birth or passage of numerous people with illustrious minds. Many of them have been mathematicians, physicists or in any case personalities for whom these sciences have been a relevant aspect of life, from Galileo to Ada Lovelace, daughter of George Byron, author of the first computer program, from Fibonacci to Antonio Pacinotti and his father Luigi, secretary of the First Meeting of Italian Scientists held in Pisa in 1839. From Marconi, who won the Nobel Prize (the first Italian) for physics, despite not having a degree and who obstinately had his antennas lifted by kites after they had been knocked down by a storm, to Fermi, who when asked how he had reached such surprising conclusions, replied CIF! or With Phenomenal Intuition!
Their story, told in Pisa Walks with mathematical and physical curiosities through the Pisan places that hosted them and that not everyone knows (Galileo’s birthplace, the Specola which was the first Tuscan astronomical observatory, the underground connection between the Caravan Palacehome of the Scuola Normale Superiore and the Gherardesca Palace with the very famous tower of Count Ugolino, just to name a few) is a journey to discover the humanistic side of disciplines defined as technical, a way to encourage people to get to know their territory better and at the same time motivate curiosity for its scientific resources. The stories of the conquests achieved in Pisa by famous scientists, after years of attempts, errors, failures, are an incentive to never give up trying again in the face of failure and to get up from defeats with determination..
