Prof. S. Vecchio Ciprioti
AICAT president
Dipartimento di Scienze di Base ed Applicate per l’Ingegneria
(S.B.A.I.) (sezione di Chimica “Paolo Silvestroni”) della Facoltà di
Ingegneria Civile ed Industriale di Sapienza Università di Roma.
via del Castro laurenziano 7, 00161 Roma RM (Italy)
e-mail: stefano.vecchio@uniroma1.it
Tel. +39-06-4976-6906
It is with great
sadness that we have to inform you that Professor Giuseppe (Pino) Della
Gatta,
former AICAT President and GICAT Coordinator, passed away on September
6th
2020. Pino graduated from the Faculty of Sciences of the University of
Turin in
March 1961. The following year he started serving at the Faculty of
Pharmacy of
the same University as an Assistant Professor of General &
Inorganic
Chemistry, until 1982 when he became Associate Professor of Physical
Chemistry;
he became Full Professor of the same discipline in 2007. Pino was among
the pioneering
Italian researchers to measure the thermodynamic properties of organic
compounds by DSC and was recognized as the leading Italian expert in
the field.
He was one of the founder of the Italian Association of Thermal
Analysis and
Calorimetry (AICAT) and served as the first Chairman of this
Association from 1979
to 1981 strongly contributing to the development of calorimetry in
Italy.
During the early eighties, thanks to his intense activity and to his
dedication
became a member of the ICTA (International Conference of Thermal
Analysis) board.
In 1989, together with other colleagues operating in the field of
Calorimetry
and Thermal Analysis, contributed to the foundation of the
Interdivisional
Group of Calorimetry and Thermal Analysis (GICAT) of the Italian
Chemical Society
for which he also served as a coordinator from 1992 to 1998. Over the
years he
strongly supported the use of thermal and calorimetric techniques in
various
fields with a special emphasis on the physico-chemical characterization
of
materials. The last part of his career was devoted to the study of
ageing and deterioration
of historical parchments. In the fifty-year of his research activity,
he was
coordinator and responsible of international and national research
projects. In
addition to his roles within AICAT and GICAT,
Pino has been very active within several national and
international
scientific organizations; he was among the co-founders of the
Mediterranean
Conference of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry (MEDICTA) and has been
serving
as Councilor of the International Confederation for Thermal Analysis
(ICTA) and
International Confederation for Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry
(ICTAC), a
Member of the IUPAC Commission on Thermodynamics, a Board Member of the
Italian
Association of Physical-Chemistry (AICF), a Member of the European
Symposium on
Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry (ESTAC) Committee, the Chairman of the
ICTA/ICTAC Committee on Calorimetry, the Chairman of the ICTAC
Liaison-International Relationship Committee. Pino greatly contributed
to the
success of leading Journals in the specific field: he was a Member of
the Editorial
Board of Thermochimica Acta, a Member Advisory Board of the Journal of
Chemical
Thermodynamics, the Associate Editor of the Journal of Thermal Analysis
and
Calorimetry. We all remember him as an excellent host of several
national and
international conferences; undoubtedly the 11th IUPAC Conference on
Chemical
Thermodynamics which Pino organized will remain in the memories of many
of us.
Pino was awarded the Honorary Medal “N.S. Kurnakov” by the Russian
Academy of
Sciences (1990), the Honorary Medal for the 50th Anniversary of the
University
of Łódź (1998) and the Mettler-Toledo Award of the North American
Thermal
Analysis Society (NATAS) (2003). His preparation and scientific
intuitions have
enriched the baggage of the numerous researchers who had the chance to
work
with Pino. His stylishness and savoir-faire
were the icing on the cake of the social events of calorimetry and
thermal
analysis meetings. Pino’s loss will be difficult to fill.