A journey into the depths of the cosmos, between distant and unexplored worlds, a rigorous but exciting narrative. Other lands. Journey to discover extrasolar planets by Giovanni Covone, published by HarperCollins, is the book that won the ASIMOV Award this year.
The title of the winning book has just been announced during a dedicated event in the Sala Azzurra at the Turin International Book Fair, where the author Giovanni Covone met some of the students who were jurors for the Prize. The ASIMOV Prize is an award for scientific publishing and a project for high schools, promoted by the INFN – National Institute of Nuclear Physics. Now in its ninth edition, this year the project saw more than 13,000 students from 333 schools across Italy participate in the role of jurors.
“Altre Terre” was the most appreciated book by the students who read, reviewed and voted on the books in the final. “With its compelling narrative, its conceptual depth and its wealth of scientific detail, [Altre Terre] offers a unique opportunity to explore distant worlds and imagine the future of space exploration and life in the universe” comments Alessandro Mazziotti of the “Mirto Crosia” Scientific High School (Crosia – Cosenza). “[L’autore] wants to make us look towards the sky, make us curious about a reality so apparently distant that perhaps contains stories so close.”
“And while we listen to words full of numbers […] with their eyes always turned towards the starry sky, we find women and men, scientists who tell of failures, discoveries and studies that seem to never end, speeches united by a recurring question: the presence or absence of other forms of life around us”, says Maria Ginevra Montelione of the “Galileo Galilei” Scientific High School (Perugia). “Giovanni Covone accompanies us, like a Virgil, along the streets full of mistakes, frustration and failures through which we have reached these small results, coming to reveal something very important to us: that to reach any peak you have to make mistakes, fall and get up again.” , comments Giorgio Etere of the Convitto “Cotugno” (L’Aquila).
Precisely based on the reviews, the students are also evaluated and rewarded during the regional ceremonies which take place in the weeks preceding the announcement. The regional ceremonies concluded last Saturday 4 May, with the award ceremony of the students from Abruzzo. During the event at the Council Hall of the Municipality of Pescara, the conclusion of the 2024 edition of the ASIMOV Junior Award was also celebrated, which this year involved 10 middle schools from Abruzzo, Campania and Molise, whose students they voted as the winner Why studying chemistry is (not) difficult (Mondadori) by the chemist and writer Marco Malvaldi, present last Saturday at the ceremony in Pescara.
The ASIMOV Prize
The ASIMOV Award was born in 2015 from an idea by Francesco Vissani, physicist and INFN researcher at the Gran Sasso National Laboratories. It is an award for scientific publishing and a project for high schools and, from 2023, for middle schools, promoted by the National Institute of Nuclear Physics with the collaboration of numerous bodies, institutions, universities and associations. The objective is to spread scientific culture among young men and women, encouraging interactions between schools, universities and the world of research and encouraging exchanges and opportunities for mutual enrichment with the humanistic disciplines.
For this reason, the jury of the ASIMOV Prize is made up of school students who have the task of reading, voting and reviewing the finalist books selected by the Scientific Commission of the Prize. All student reviews are read and evaluated by the Regional Scientific Commissions, which this year saw the collaboration of over 1200 teachers, researchers from the INFN, the Universities and the National Research Council (CNR), but also journalists, writers and exponents of the world of scientific and literary culture.
After the first entirely Abruzzo edition in 2015, thanks to the support of the INFN and the great enthusiasm of all the participants, year after year it involved an ever-increasing number of students, teachers, researchers and exponents of the world of culture. Today 333 schools are participating for a total of approximately 13268 students from Abruzzo, Basilicata, Campania, Calabria, Emilia-Romagna, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Lazio, Liguria, Lombardy, Marche, Molise, Piedmont, Puglia, Sardinia, Sicily, Tuscany , Trentino-Alto Adige, Umbria, Val d’Aosta and Veneto.
Since 2018, the ASIMOV Award has become a project of the Coordination Committee of the Third Mission of the INFN, taking on a national character. Since 2020, the initiative has arrived overseas with a first edition of the ASIMOV Brasil Award, organized by the Instituto de Estudos Avançados (IdEA) and the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp). In 2023, a first edition of the ASIMOV Junior Award was held, dedicated to middle schools, which initially involved only the Tinozzi school in Pescara, which coordinates the project together with the INFN. In 2024 the project expanded to involve 10 schools from Abruzzo, Molise and Campania.
