Eraldo Antonini Lectures, 1983–2019

“Can order spring from Chaos?” is the title of an extensive Report on Italian science published by NATURE on 12 May 1983 and written by Robert Walgate, the Chief European Correspondent. It is a twenty pages complete paper touching all aspects of the struggle of Italian scientists to work in the “curious amalgam of ingenuity and muddle, a reflection of the political system”. (Nature, 1983; 303: 109–128). To read it after four decades is interesting but somewhat depressing since the main problems unfolded in the paper have not been solved, starting with the largely insufficient support of fundamental curiosity driven research. At page 114 you could find a item called: ITALY’s TOP SCIENTISTS: Four in the top one thousand. The Author refers to the data reported by the ISI (Institute of Scientific Information) that took two years to scan 3,000 major journals over the period 1965–78 and covered 5 millions articles and 67 millions references. The four top Italian scientists working in Italy were: Eraldo Antonini (3127 citations), Enrico Clementi (4001), Silvio Garattini (2833), and Giorgio Giacomelli (2483); 3 out of four were 52 years old, and one 55. Antonini did not see the Report since he passed away on March 18, 1983. However the information leaked before the publication of Nature because I remember the Messaggero of Rome reporting a whole page with the ranking of the four Italians, and even a picture of Eraldo. The students of the first year Medical course, his Class, welcomed the Professor with a standing ovation. After a short time the Board of the SIB (Società Italiana di Biochimica) casted a unanimous vote in favour of the motion of President Noris Siliprandi to begin the annual Congress with an Antonini Lecture, forever. As reported below, the tradition began immediately at the Congress in Saint-Vicent, Italy, and is continuing. In this paper I report an account of the Eraldo Antonini Lectures that I attended over the years and until September 2019, a few months before the pandemics lock down.