May 17, 2014

Speech by Prof. Fernando Quevedo, director of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP ), on the occasion of the Premio Barcola 2014 ceremony

Dear friends,

Good morning.

I would first like to thank the Barcola Award organizing committee for considering ICTP worthy of receiving a prize which in the past has recognized individuals and organizations who have given a lot to this city.

In the next few minutes I would like to tell you what ICTP gave Trieste, but also how important it was for us to choose Trieste as the seat for our institution, and how the city has given us not only infrastructure and institutional support, but also hospitality and friendship.

I like to call ICTP a unique model of international cooperation. ICTP is in fact the first, and remains the most important, global institution for research and education in the sciences. The Abdus Salam ICTP was founded with the help of Paolo Budinich in 1964, exactly 50 years ago, under the auspices of the Italian Government and the International Atomic Energy Agency. The research that led to Abdus Salam's Nobel Prize in 1979 was conducted in large part right here in Trieste .

Since 1995, the administration of the ICTP has been handled by UNESCO, with a tripartite agreement in which Italy makes most of the financial contribution.

Abdus Salam was not only one of the best physicists of the time, he was also a special person in many ways. Born in Pakistan (at the time a British colony), Salam had the good fortune to have his talent recognized from a young age. After completing his studies at Cambridge he decided to return to Pakistan to spread knowledge of new developments in physics to new generations in his country. But he soon realized that the conditions there could not support high-level research. He returned to England, where he decided to spend most of his energies opening a center where physicists and scientists from all over the world, and in particular from the regions most disadvantaged, could meet and discuss advanced theories, with no boundaries and constraints. Citing Salam himself: "Scientific thought and its creation is the common and shared heritage of mankind". In a world divided by political, religious or ideological beliefs, scientific thought unites us all. This was the reason ICTP was created.

The idea of creating ICTP materialized in a scientific meeting organized by Paolo Budinich in 1960 at the Castelletto di Miramare. The meeting was attended by a number of people who have since contributed significantly to the birth and growth of ICTP. In addition to Salam, Claudio Villi, former president of the Consortium of Physics who played a very important role in bringing the center to Trieste, was present at the meeting. Also present were Luciano Bertocchi, former Deputy Director of the ICTP, Daniele Amati, former Director of SISSA and Pino Furlan. At that time, Trieste was already home to the University, the Astronomical Observatory and the OGS.

A local committee was created in 1961 to propose the candidature of Trieste to host the center. Trieste beat competing applications from Copenhagen, Geneva and Vienna. On October 5, 1964, ICTP was inaugurated in Trieste with a conference on plasma physics.

Its first home was the present Palace of the region, in Piazza Oberdan. I would like to recall here how important the role was of local institutions in creating ICTP. In addition to the Consortium, the University, the Region, the Province, and the City, private institutions such as the Cassa di Risparmio provided crucial financial aid. In 1968, ICTP moved to its present location in Miramare.

Since then, the ICTP has expanded its scientific areas. Starting with High Energy Physics (Salam's field of research), in 1974 it added Condensed Matter Physics, Mathematics in 1986, Applied Physics in 1990 and Earth System Physics led by Filippo Giorgi in 1998. The latest additions are Renewable Energy, Quantitative Biology and High Performance Computing.

Parallel to its internal growth, the ICTP contributed to and stimulated the creation of many other local scientific institutions: the Consortium in 1964, SISSA in 1978, the Trieste International Foundation in 1980, Area Science Park in 1982, TWAS in 1983, the ICGEB in 1987, the Elettra synchrotron in 1993. These form an "Olympus" of institutions that make Trieste a "city of science" par excellence. A city in which almost 4 percent of the population works in research - ten times more than the Italian average - can fully be considered the center of the scientific world map.

In these first 50 years of its existence, the ICTP has hosted more than 130,000 scientists from every corner of the world. The distribution of the institutions from which our visitors come from is balanced among the various regions of the world: Africa, Latin America, Asia. We also have a large number of scientists who come from Europe. If we consider that these scientists are in Trieste at their own expense--ICTP only supports scientists from developing countries--this is for us an important sign of the scientific level and the attractiveness of scientific events that take place at ICTP.

Scientists from 188 different countries have come to Trieste. We lack only a few small Pacific islands. In our halls you can meet Palestinians who discuss physics with Israelis. For the first time in the history of the ICTP, we have students from North Korea, and you can see them conversing with colleagues from South Korea. We call it "science diplomacy", and it is the road that many nations and international organizations have recognized as an extremely effective way to remove barriers, bring people together, and build a more peaceful world.

Only twenty percent of our visitors are women. This figure is unfortunately in line with the global percentage of the number of women scientists, but we are committed to balance the numbers and encourage more women to start a career in science.

Our Diploma programme is an example. Each year, we enroll approximately 50 students from developing and least developed countries of the world and expose them to a year of intensive training in the latest developments of modern physics. The number of women enrolled in our Diploma Programme greatly exceeds 20 percent. The future is full of hope, then.

The worldwide network of scientists linked to ICTP is consolidated by our Office of External Activities (OEA), which promotes and supports affiliated centres, projects, science networks, and scientific meetings in almost every corner of the globe.

We cannot forget how the geopolitical changes in the last decade and strong growth in emerging countries such as China, India and Brazil have also changed the scenario of international scientific collaboration. Soon China will become the greatest power in the scientific world. It was thanks to ICTP that physicists in China managed to stay in touch with the international community in the 1970s and 1980s. Countries like China are now aware and appreciate the role played by ICTP, and they in turn have started supporting science at the regional level, helping their neighbouring developing countries. It is for this reason that we are building valuable alliances with Brazil, China, Turkey, Mexico, Rwanda and other emerging nations to establish regional branches of the ICTP to help their communities.

All these efforts would not be possible without a solid structure tested throughout fifty years of experience: 30 permanent scientists who are supported by 100 temporary researchers and long-term visitors, 500 visitors daily, for a total of about 6000 visits each year. I want to emphasize the fact that ICTP, in contrast to many other international organizations and funding agencies, is an institution that is run by scientists for scientists. It is exactly this relationship of trust and harmony, mediated by the common language of science, which is our great strength.

Thanks to the widespread diffusion of the Internet around the globe, and important technological efforts carried out at ICTP, almost all our activities are broadcast either live or slightly delayed on our website. Every year, 200,000 scientists follow our activities from the comfort of their own offices in their home countries. Each of them will remember not only ICTP but also Trieste, the small town on the edge of the Mediterranean, but in the center of the map of the great world of science. If you think about it, this is a formidable task of territorial marketing in which we feel proud to have contributed.

I was recently in Hangzhou, one of the most beautiful cities in China and home to a scientist who spent long periods at ICTP. He is now one of the advisors to the Mayor of Hangzhou. My colleague had a wonderful memory of Trieste and in particular of the musicians playing in the streets of the city center, probably in Cavana. Well, his first initiative as an advisor to the Mayor of Hangzhou was to convince the Mayor to encourage groups of musicians to play in the center of their city. As a result, the center of the city has been reborn and my colleague was deeply grateful for the role that ICTP had played to make his fellow citizens' lives better.

I do not know if this can be defined as "science diplomacy", but it certainly shows that the impacts of the ICTP can be really unexpected.

I would like to close my remarks by showing you a picture that symbolizes for me all the gratitude that my Centre has for two protagonists who have contributed more than any other in the birth and growth of ICTP. On one hand, Italy, represented here by President Napolitano, on a visit to our Centre in 2008. For fifty years this country has been a strong supporter and has always believed in the importance of our mission. On the other hand, Paolo Budinich, who died last year, to whom ICTP owes not only much of its existence, but especially the fact that it is located in this beautiful and friendly city.

Just today ICTP is hosting the exhibition of "makers", i.e., inventors and other tech enthusiasts, crafters and scientists, who will exhibit their creations to the public and share all their ideas and inventions. Everyone is invited to join to the party.

And if today you are busy, we can make an appointment for October 6th, when we begin the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the Centre. There will be Nobel Prize winners, the Directors-General of UNESCO and IAEA and several ministers.

But also feel free to visit us whenever you like. Our doors are always open and we have many things to show you.

Thank you.