The commemorative event in memory of Professor Franco Siccardi took place in Savona on 27 September 2024.
Behind every discovery, every step forward in the science of risk reduction, there is a deep conviction: that knowledge is not just a matter of numbers or theories, but a way to transform fear into awareness. ‘Franco was a great advocate of the social value of science because he believed that science should be transformed into operational tools,’ said CIMA Research Foundation President Luca Ferraris.
And so Professor Franco Siccardi was not just a pioneer of science applied to civil protection, but a man capable of seeing beyond, of grasping those profound links that unite technical knowledge with artistic creativity, knowledge with human sensitivity. His vision did not stop at risk prevention, but embraced the broader meaning of responsibility towards the world and people.
Today at our Foundation we experienced a celebration of the ‘scientific humanism’ that our founder and President Emeritus of our Foundation, Franco Siccardi, left us as a legacy. At the commemorative event ‘Science and Art, Responsibility and Memory’, colleagues, friends and students gathered to celebrate his memory through speeches, videos and performances. The unveiling of the stele dedicated to him, ‘Knowing to Replace Fear’, designed by artist Beppe Schiavetta, was the culmination of a day that made tangible the profound link between scientific knowledge and artistic creation, two worlds that Prof. Siccardi knew how to bring together harmoniously.
‘Franco played the scientist and explained to Beppe the mechanisms by which floods, droughts and forest fires occurred, and he turned them into images,’ Ferraris continued. And so, at the end of the day, the exhibition of the Foundation’s art collection, ‘Lament for Ur’, and the exhibition ‘Lucretius Caro De Rerum Natura’ offered a further reflection on the value of knowledge and beauty, two elements central to Franco Siccardi’s life and thought.
