Riccardo Levi-Setti

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Riccardo Levi-Setti (born July 12, 1927 in Milan - † November 8, 2018 in Chicago ) was an American physicist and trilobite researcher.

Levi-Setti was a Jew in the Italian resistance. He received his doctorate in physics from the University of Pavia in 1949 and completed his habilitation in 1955 at the University of Rome (Libera Docenza). From 1951 to 1956 he was at the National Research Institute for Nuclear Physics in Milan and then at the Enrico Fermi Institute of the University of Chicago , where he was assistant professor from 1957 to 1962 (and at the same time lecturer in Milan from 1957 to 1964). In 1963 he was a Guggenheim Fellow at CERN . In 1962 he became associate professor and in 1965 professor of physics at the University of Chicago. From 1992 to 1998 he was director of the Enrico Fermi Institute. He has been Professor Emeritus since 2000.

Levi-Setti invented a device for secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), the Scanning Ion Microprobe (UC-SIM), which was used from materials science to biology. This allows surfaces with a resolution of less than 100 nanometers to be examined by irradiating them with ions and analyzing the scattered ions in a high-resolution mass spectrometer . He himself applied it to the investigation of chromosomes , for example, where he was able to resolve the distribution of magnesium and calcium cations in the chromosomes of dinoflagellates and showed that these ensure the charge neutrality of the chromosomes in these simple eukaryotes without histones, which is important for structural stability .

Levi-Setti is known as a trilobite expert and has published an illustrated book about trilobites. He has been collecting these worldwide since 1956, including in Morocco , and prepares them himself. Since 1976 he has been a Research Associate with the Field Museum of Natural History at the University of Chicago. He worked with Euan Clarkson , among others, in the 1970s on the visual mechanisms of trilobites, using his ion microsample instrument. In 2008 he received the Charles Sternberg Award from the Association of Applied Paleontological Sciences.

He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (1962). He received the Leonardo da Vinci Award from the Sons of Italy in America . In 1953 he received the Como City Prize of the Italian Physical Society and in 1995 he became Commendatore dell'Ordine al Merito della Republica Italiana . In 2015 an asteroid was named after him: (45700) Levi-Setti .

He died in Chicago on November 8, 2018, at the age of 91.

Fonts

  • Trilobites , University of Chicago Press, 1975, 2nd edition 1993
  • with KL Gavrilov High Resolution Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry Imaging , in J. Hornak (Editor) Encyclopedia of Imaging Science and Technology , Wiley 2002
  • with Euan Clarkson, G. Horvath The eyes of Trilobites: The oldest known visual system , Arthropod Structure & Development, Volume 35, 2006, p. 247
  • the same: The eye: Paleontology , in Frontiers of Life , Volume 1 The origins of Life , Academic Press 2001
  • with Thomas Lasinski Strongly interacting particles , University of Chicago Press 1973
  • Elementary Particles , University of Chicago Press 1963

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life and career data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  2. ↑ Prices for faculty members Chicago ( Memento of the original from June 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / physics.uchicago.edu
  3. ↑ Riccardo Levi-Setti, physicist and trilobite collector, 1927-2018 , accessed on November 15, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Levi-Setti, Riccardo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist and paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 12, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Milan
DATE OF DEATH November 8, 2018
Place of death Chicago