Gallieno Denardo, the Office of External Activities and its integration with the Optics Programmes

Joseph J Niemela¹ and Katepalli R Sreenivasan²

¹The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics,Trieste, Italy, (Former Head of OEA)

²Physics Department, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and Tandon School of Engineering, New York University (Former Director of ICTP, Italy)

In memory of Professor Gallieno Denardo, ICTP Italy

The Office of External Activities (OEA) was a specialized office of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP). It funded and administered scientific activities that took place largely outside of the ICTP campus in Trieste, Italy. These activities included affiliated centers of excellence, scientific networks, visiting scholars programs, as well as support for scientific conferences and schools taking place around the world. All of this at one time was under the overall direction of Professor Gallieno Denardo, and he used the various pieces to provide a holistic approach to development, including the optics program. Later it would also absorb the Training and Research in Italian Laboratories (TRIL) program, providing long-term research and training visits to various Italian laboratories for early-to-mid career scientists from developing countries, with a total annual budget of around 0.75 million Euro. The TRIL Program was created initially by Professor Pino Furlan.        

                The development of optics and laser physics was of great personal importance for Gallieno and the OEA was an integral part of that development efforts. It was more a labor of love for him, and presumably also a powerful counter-irritant to some other aspects of his work. It might seem odd that he would have become involved in this experimentally-focused area of science in the first place, given that his research interests and training were broadly in theoretical aspects of general relativity. It is easy to understand why he would remain engaged, taking into account the welcoming support he received from leaders in the optics community, including many contributors to this volume, but the right beginnings could perhaps be understood by considering one aspect of the ICTP founder Abdus Salam’s thinking about the Center that surely had resonated with Gallieno: As recounted by Prof. Luciano Bertocchi, former Deputy Director of ICTP and interim Director following Salam’s death, Salam had encouraged scientists employed at the center to devote some non-negligible fraction of their time and effort to scientific topics that were outside their own area of expertise, those that could have more direct societal relevance and contribute to developing sustainable scientific systems in economically disadvantaged regions of the world. In actuality, the percentage of staff time given in this respect looked good as an average over all scientists at the Center, only because some, like Gallieno, devoted all their time on it. Gallieno created a broad international optics community at ICTP, building appreciation for the topic, despite the fact that the Center had little or no in-house expertise. Dr Miltcho Danailov, originally a TRIL Fellow from Bulgaria, was the main exception to this, recruited later as a full-time scientist at the Synchrotron in Trieste (Elettra), where he has played a critical role in the development of Elettra’s unique free electron laser. Inspite of this activity, he has generously maintained his strong support for the optics program at ICTP.