Emilio Del Giudice

Illuminating Water and Life

Emilio collapsed at his home in Milan Italy while in the throes of writing scientific papers with his colleagues and collaborators; he died in hospital later that evening, 30 January 2014. Emilio is the most brilliant scientist in the world who has inspired me among countless others. He is also the kindest, most generous, entertaining, wise and witty man. I had been so looking forward to discussing my latest ideas with him on mathematics, art,  beauty,  consciousness, and the universe (see The Story of Phi and other articles in the series); for such is his wide ranging interests and passion. That was not to be. He was taken away suddenly and without warning.

This was what he said in a short video for our Colours of Water art/science/music festival in March 2013 (https://www.i-sis.org.uk/Emilio_Del_Giudice.php):

“I am totally at odds with the paradigm of conventional science that looks on matter as an inert entity pushed around by external forces. The paradigm of quantum field physics does not separate matter from movement as matter is intrinsically fluctuating.

“There is a possibility of tuning together the quantum fluctuations of a large number of bodies and creating coherence in matter through music. Human organisms could be a part of such coherence. 

“Artistic experiences are resonances in the framework of our quantum field paradigm. Their relevance for the self-organization of matter has been recognized by artists and humanists long before the scientists.

“Conventional science is very far from the dreams, needs and wishes of people. It has no place for the spontaneous movement of organisms or the love between organisms. My fellow countryman, the philosopher G.B. Vico, used to say: “Poetic truth is a wider truth than physical truth”. But he was referring to the mechanistic physics of his time.

“Our task today is to show that the modern quantum field paradigm is able to raise physical truth to the same level as poetic truth.”

He was and is my soul mate; now he reaches my mind and heart directly through the ether.

Del Giudice has lit the fire for the new science of the organism, as Prometheus had for the classical science of mechanism. He actually saw himself (and fellow scientists) in that role in a beautiful essay honouring Herbert Fröhlich (1905-1991), whose idea of energy storage and coherent excitations for living systems provided an entry point for my own incursion into the physics of organisms in the late 1980s. I count myself among Del Giudice’s many torch-bearers who will roam the earth and spread the flame to dispel the darkness with his dazzling light.

See the full scientific paper honouring Emilio Del Giudice here: Ho MW. Illuminating water and life. Entropy 2014, 16, 4874-91. http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/16/9/4874

Article first published 01/10/2014

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