Overview
- Italy’s public broadcaster Rai announced Zichichi’s death at 96, with major outlets confirming the news on February 9.
- He led the 1965 CERN team that reported the first antideuteron, an antimatter nucleus, and later promoted the Gran Sasso underground labs begun in 1980.
- His leadership posts included the INFN presidency from 1977 to 1982 and the European Physical Society presidency in 1978, followed by the World Lab initiative with Isidor Isaac Rabi.
- He founded the Ettore Majorana Center in Erice and became a household name through science outreach, fiercely denouncing astrology and superstition as a “cultural Hiroshima.”
- A polarizing figure, he criticized Darwinian evolution and the human role in climate change, and his 1979 bid to direct CERN split member states and was voted down.