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.