Piero Angela, 93 years old, master of scientific popularization, died
Piero Angela died at the age of 93. The dean of television presenters, master of scientific dissemination on TV, died in Rome. The news was confirmed by his son, Alberto Angela, on the social profiles: “Have a good trip dad”, wrote Alberto, himself TV host. Born in Turin in 1928, Angela had started her journalistic career in Rai as a radio reporter, later becoming a correspondent and finally host of the news program.
However, his notoriety is linked to the production of Anglo-Saxon scientific popularization television programs, with which he founded a solid documentary tradition for Italian television (Quark, 1981; Superquark, 1995, and numerous derivative programs).
Among the numerous publications, always of a scientific-popular nature: In the cosmos in search of life (1980); The thinking machine (1983); Oceans (1991); The challenge of the century (2006); Why do we have to have more children (with L. Pinna, 2008); What is politics for? (2011); Behind the scenes of history. Daily life through time (with A. Barbero, 2012); Journey into the mind: knowing the brain to keep it in shape (2014); Thirteen billion years. The novel of the universe (2015); The eyes of the Mona Lisa (2016).
Last May he received the “Medicus – Gentile da Foligno“ 2022 award
In 2017 he published the autobiographical book My long journey. In 2004 he was awarded the title of Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic and in 2021 of the title of Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
Tv: Piero Angela, the prince of scientific popularization with “Quark” and “Superquark” / Adnkronos
His shows have changed the way people watch science on TV
With a clear and precise language, understandable to all, the notoriety of the journalist Piero Angela is linked to the creation of Anglo-Saxon scientific popularization television programs, with which he founded a solid documentary tradition for Italian television: among his most successful for Rai “Quark” (1981) and “Superquark (1995) and the numerous derivatives. And he was co-author of another popularization program, “Ulysses”, which saw the light in 2001 and is run by his son Alberto.
Born in Turin on December 22, 1928 (his father, Carlo Angela, was a doctor and anti-fascist), Piero Angela began working for Rai during the 1950s: at that time he was a reporter and collaborator of the Giornale Radio. Between 1955 and 1968 he was the foreign correspondent, in Paris and then in Brussels, for the national RAI news. With the journalist Andrea Barbato he presented the first edition of the 13.30 news program and in 1976 he was the first to host Tg2.
Starting from 1968, he devoted himself to documentaries: the first were dedicated to the discovery of space and to the “Apollo” program, the American plan that led to the landing of the first men on the moon with the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969. Starting from 1971 conducts numerous information broadcasts and educational programs, always using and reinventing different formulas, with a well-kept language, always attentive and always evolving: “Man Destination”, “From zero to three years”, “Survey on parapsychology” and “In cosmos in search of life “.
Since 1981 he has hosted “Quark”, one of the first scientific popularization television programs destined for the general public, which exploits the resources of television communication in a new and original way: documentaries by the BBC and David Attenborough, cartoons by Bruno Bozzetto whose immediacy is very effective in explaining the most difficult concepts, interviews with experts, explanations in the studio.
The program broadcast by Rai 1 has a remarkable success and will give life to other broadcasts: “Quark special”, “The world of Quark” (naturalistic documentaries), “Quark Economia”, “Quark Europa” (with socio-political contents). He then creates the “Italian Quarks” series by having Italian authors produce about fifty documentaries on topics such as nature, environment, exploration, animals; some of him are made together with his twenty-year-old son Alberto in Africa, an environment where he carries out his paleoanthropological studies on the ancestors of man.
In 1983 he made nine film-dossiers that deal with scientific topics. He curates the “Pills of Quark”, about 200 short commercials of 30 seconds each, which pass over 5,000 times in the programs during the programming of Rai1.
He later made great TV series of great innovation: he travels inside the human body with “The wonderful machine” in 1990 (8 episodes), in prehistory with “The planet of the dinosaurs” in 1993 (4 episodes) and in space with “Journey into cosmo ”in 1998 (7 episodes). The series are made with his son Alberto and are also shot in English: they will then be exported to over 40 countries, from Europe to America, up to Arab countries and China.
Since 1995 he has been the author and host of “Superquark”. Four years later, in 1999, Piero Angela celebrated the milestone of 2,000 episodes of “Quark” (and related programs) and in the same year the “Superquark Specials” were launched, single-issue episodes on topics of great scientific, social or psychological. Within the historic Rai afternoon program “Domenica In”, again in 1999, he leads a space dedicated to culture.
“Ulisse”, since 2001, is another successful dissemination program conducted by Alberto Angela, of which Piero and his son are the author. In the same year Piero Angela launched the monthly scientific publication which, linked to the television program “Quark”, bears the same name: in short, it became the most widely read magazine in Italy after “Focus”.
In his long career he has carried out an intense activity of scientific education not only on TV but also holding conferences and writing articles in newspapers and magazines (for example he edited the column “Science and society” on the weekly “Tv Sorrisi e Canzoni”). In order to promote scientific investigations that unmask paranormal events of dubious reliability, in 1989 Piero Angela founded the Cicap (Italian Committee for the Control of Claims on the Paranormal), which is part of the European Council of Skeptical Organizations.
He has obtained numerous awards not only in Italy but also abroad (in the United States and Japan) and received the prestigious Unesco Kalinga international prize for scientific dissemination in Paris. For his activity as a popularizer he has been awarded eight honorary degrees.
There are three honors conferred on him by the Presidency of the Republic: on April 2, 2002, the Gold Medal for the meritorious of culture and art; on May 26, 2004 the appointment as Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic; on 11 May 2021 the honor of Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
Piero Angela is the author of over 30 books, some of which have been translated into English, German, French and Spanish, with a total circulation of well over 3 million copies.
Among the numerous books:
- “From zero to three years. The birth of the mind ”Garzanti, 1973);
- “Archimedes’ tub” (Garzanti, 1975);
- “Journey into the world of the paranormal. Survey on parapsychology ”(Garzanti, 1978);
- “In the cosmos in search of life” (Garzanti, 1980);
- “Travel in science. Quark’s world ”(Garzanti, 1982);
- “The thinking machine. Discovering the brain ”(Garzanti, 1983);
- “Journey into the human body” (with Pietro Motta, Garzanti, 1986);
- “The extraordinary history of man. Clue by clue an investigation into our origins ”(with Alberto Angela, Mondadori 1989);
- “The extraordinary story of life on Earth. Diary of a journey of four billion years ”(with Alberto Angela, Mondadori, 1992);
- “The planet of the dinosaurs. When the great reptiles dominated the world ”(with Alberto Angela, Mondadori, 1993);
- “The extraordinary adventure of a life that is born. Nine months in the womb ”(with Alberto Angela, Rai-Eri Mondadori, 1996);
- “Journey into the Cosmos. Discovering the Mysteries of the Universe ”(with Alberto Angela, Rai-Eri Mondadori, 1997);
- “Telling the science” (Pratiche, 1998);
- “I will Always Love You. The science of love ”(Rai-Eri Mondadori, 2005);
- “The challenge of the century. Power. 200 questions on the future of our children ”(with Lorenzo Pinna, Mondadori, 2006);
- “Because we have to have more children. The unthinkable consequences of the collapse of births ”(with Lorenzo Pinna, Mondadori, 2008);
- “What is politics for?” (Mondadori, 2011);
- “Behind the scenes of history. Daily life through time ”(with Alessandro Barbero, Rizzoli, 2012);
- “Journey into the mind. Knowing the brain to keep it in shape ”(Mondadori, 2014);
- “Thirteen billion years. The novel of the universe ”(Mondadori, 2015).
- In 2017 he published the autobiographical book “My long journey. 90 years of lived stories ”(Mondadori).
(Spe / Adnkronos)
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Piero Angela, 93 years old, master of scientific popularization, died