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Founder of the International School of Crystallography, 1974–2010
Dear All,
It is with great sadness that I write as Director of the School of Crystallography at Erice to report the death of Lodovico Riva Di Sanseverino on 18 June 2010.
Lodovico died in Trapani after working on the 2010 Course on Crystallography at the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture, Erice, Italy. We left him in good spirits and looking forward to courses for the next seven years.
As you know Lodovico has been the driving force of the School since 1974. The courses are known for the excellence of their speakers, the liveliness of the participants, the splendour of Erice and for the personality of Lodovico.
At the Erice Courses Lodovico's organisational skills and hard work always made the meetings a success. But his secret was his enthusiasm, the individual attention he paid to all participants and his humour. We all remember his inimitable style as he encouraged us to switch on the microphone, give our name and speak more clearly! We remember his translations of the local songs as we were entertained in san Francisco or san Rocco. And of course we remember his songbook and his ability to sing in so many languages, bringing in participants from all over the world to the Marsala Room. We will miss him a lot.
As you know, Lodovico was a distinguished scholar of Mineralogy and Crystallography and Professor at the University of Bologna, and had made many contributions to crystallography over the years.
Lodovico leaves a wife, Fiorbellina, and a family, and our thoughts are with them in this difficult time.
Paola, Annalisa, John and I will do what we can to continue the courses and we have a schedule till 2017. They will be a fine memorial to Lodovico.
Tom Blundell
The name of Lodovico Riva di Sanseverino will remain forever associated with the Ericean Schools of Crystallography and with his great skill and success as an organizer, but it is important to recall that behind this there was a brilliant career as a crystallographer and as a teacher.
Lodovico was born in Palermo in 1939 and in Palermo he spent most of his undergraduate and graduate study career. He then moved to the University of Florence where, in 1962, he got his degree in Chemistry under the supervision of Professor Sacconi, at that time one of the biggest names in the field. Immediately after graduating in Chemistry he spent a few years doing post-doc crystallographic training, first in the lab of Prof. Caroline Mac Gillavry at the University of Amsterdam, and then at the University of Cambridge, UK, under the guidance of Prof. Olga Kennard. He spent many periods over several years there, and Frank Allen, who was also in Olga's group at that time, recalled that "when they saw Lodovico reappear, they immediately knew that spring was coming"!
His academic career in Italy started as Assistant Professor at the University of Bologna; after a short period at the University of Palermo, he went back to Bologna in 1975 as Full Professor in Mineralogy and Crystallography. His scientific work was mainly focused on correlating structure to properties, and at the same time on deepening current methodologies. In the early seventies Lodovico was part of the first group of enthusiastic users of Direct Methods in Italy. In Bologna, over the years, he trained many young researchers now working in several chemistry departments. In the late nineties a serious glaucoma definitively damaged his eyes, and teaching and organization became his main activities.
His love for these three words — Crystallography, Teaching and Organization — are in fact condensed in this "International School of Crystallography" that you are now experiencing, and that he created in the early seventies, welcoming the suggestion of famous crystallographers like Michael Woolfson and Herb Hauptman, who had already had the opportunity to recognize Lodovico's abilities as an organizer.
Looking back at the long series of courses he organized, from 1974 up to today, it is impressive to see the effort Lodovico put not only into trying to keep the quality of the science offered to students as high as possible, but also into improving the standard of the local facilities. Being very clear in his mind that students and teachers can more easily learn and teach if they are happy, he put great care into planning the so-called "social events", and into creating a friendly and warm atmosphere among participants, aimed at helping younger students interact easily with senior scientists.
The main pride of Lodovico was to be able to cite a long list of scientists who started their career as "students" in Erice and later became "big bosses" of well renowned crystallographic labs, thanks to the links established in Erice. He was also particularly proud of the fact that 15 Nobel Laureates were invited to contribute to the Courses before receiving their prestigious award. The success of the courses and the great work of Lodovico were officially recognized by the crystallographic community in 2005, when, during the banquet of the XX IUCr Congress in Florence, he was awarded by the Union a prize for his "Exceptional Service to Crystallography" and for his organization of the Erice schools.
William G. Duax, President, International Union of Crystallography, congratulates Lodovico Riva di Sanseverino for the Exceptional Award as a recognition of the Erice International Courses activity.
— Florence, August 2005 —
