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Prof. Ettore Fiorini Delivers Second Enrico Fermi Lecture on Archaeometallurgy

On Thursday, 27th of April 2017, The Cyprus Institute, in collaboration with the Embassy of Italy in Cyprus and the Dante Alighieri Society, hosted a lecture entitled ‘Present and Future Research on Archaeometallurgy of Sardinian Artifacts and Copper provided by Cyprus’, as part of the ongoing Enrico Fermi Lecture Series. The lecture was given by Prof. Ettore Fiorini, Emeritus Professor at the University di Milano-Bicocca and National Member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.

In his lecture, Prof. Fiorini presented the discovery of a Roman shipwreck near the coast of Sardinia, along with the consequent recovery of half of the two thousand lead ingots contained on the ship. The lecture discussed the results of the analysis performed on the recovered metal, using the most advanced techniques normally employed in nuclear and particle physics, such as X- and Gamma-ray spectroscopy, neutron activation, and inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy.

Prof. Fiorini is the recipient of the ‘Enrico Fermi’ Prize of Società Italiana di Fisica, of the medal “Benemeriti della Scienza e della Cultura” of the President of the Italian Republic, and more recently, of the Bruno Pontecorvo Prize by the International Institute of Nuclear Physics (Russia). His research has mainly focused on experimental nuclear and subnuclear physics, with particular reference to the properties of the neutrino, and he participated in the discovery of weak neutral currents. A considerable part of his current research is devoted to archaeometry (the application of scientific techniques to the analysis of archaeological materials, in particular to help date the materials). His studies are currently focused on detecting the properties of metallic archaeological remains in a Nuragic village near Sassari.