Ezio Todesco. Bologna, Italy. 1965. Ph. D. in Physics, in Mathematical Physics. Currently working at CERN. Living in Geneva, Switzerland. Synthetic is the way he likes things. 

It was in 1989, when Ezio joint CERN for the first time as a technical student. That was before his Ph. D. Later on, the same year that Guns, Germs and Steel, from Jared Diamond, won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, Ezio became a real CERNie. Now, more than 22 years later, he remembers fondly a winter day in which collaborators from Pakistan (who were not 20, not that young) started to play in the snow because it was the first time they saw it.

He still misses the Italian coffee and the beauty of the buildings, that beauty that Ezio also finds in Stanley Kubrick films, in understanding things and in not understanding things. If he could have a bookstore with just two fiction books, he would be accompanied by The Count of Monte Cristo, from Alexandre Dumas, and The Mysterious Island, from Jules Verne. A synthetic representation of the 19th century optimism, the power of science and culture.

“Of course we are much more than a book. Of course the book is not yet written. It is up to us to write it”. Ezio does not take Alessandro Baricco’s quote in the most literal sense. He prefers the verses from Stefano Benni, an Italian writer, poet and journalist who was also born in Bologna.

“Prima o poi l’amore arriva”, and that love, which arrives to us whenever it wants to, could be the beauty and the pleasure of working. As the wife of his former group lider, who is now retired, said: “Every day when he woke up, he was happy to go to work”.

That is really moving for Ezio. Not thinking about Mondays mornings as hell, and Fridays evenings as the prelude of freedom. Instead, feeling that every day working at CERN is a privilege, like a pleasure trip.

Among handcrafts, aircrafts and makeup, Beatriz combines the 25 pieces of her own puzzle. And, as Alamedadosoulna, a ska-reggae-soul group from Madrid, shouts in their concerts, she is so delighted to have met herself.

Beatriz is an aerospace engineer. She studied at the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) in Lisbon, about three hours and a half from her home town: Braga. Beatriz lived there with her family and her dog, Sherlock, a 9-year-old beagle who was born without a paw. They used to play detectives together over the hills of Braga.

After finishing her degree, she specialized in mechanics with a master’s degree. Although it was also at the IST, Beatriz’s master took off with half year of Erasmus experience in Pisa (Italy). Later on, she was working as a researcher in the Centre of Engineering and Product Development (CEiiA), in Matosinhos, and months later she flew to French lands.

Now, she is happy in the little Saint-Genis-Pouilly. She has been working at CERN for two and a half years, as Quality & Production Engineer in HiLumi LHC. She feels that her dream is coming true every day because her dream could be empirical: to be where she already is.

Although she is no longer living, literally, on top of a hill, she has the Jura nearby, and she often go all the way up to the top of it, where she sometimes runs into beauty. That beauty that Beatriz also finds on the inside of the warehouses where the machinery for the CERNies experiments is built, where she can see how the different pieces, like babies, grow and change shape. Because, for Beatriz, beauty has to do with elaboration: creating something beautiful, making something nice.

Beauty is an art, and art is subjective. Beatriz particularly enjoys one: the art of makeup, where the human face (sometimes, the whole body) becomes a blank canvas where imagination and madness are given full rein. That madness of which the Portuguese poet and doctor, Miguel Torga, spoke: the madness in which we recognize ourselves, the madness that makes us humans.

And the puzzles? Beatriz doubts because they reside on a peculiar border between art and science. The puzzles are not “absolute creation” because they come, somehow, prefabricated. They are not paintings, although they all have to do with pictorial art. The puzzles are not science either, but a methodology is needed to get a result. Like 2+2=4, the puzzles reach a unique solution, after which, there are those who decide to frame them and those who prefer to undo them.

To Beatriz, it is not necessary to be the best to achieve a goal. It is enough to have something unique, to be different. In essence: being ourselves. And, as Alamedadosoulna sings, wanting to be “como ese que sale en mi carné de identidad”. 

Beatriz’s hands, which used to make crafts when they were little, could potentially design aircrafts and space rockets. Who knows. For now, she continues to live her dream. She is still delighted with her puzzle.