Patrizia Trovalusci: An Open-Minded Scholar of Mechanics, an Architect, a Determined Woman

Abstract

After spending nearly 20 years at the School of Engineering o f the University of L’Aquila, where I made all the main initial steps of my academic career, in 1995, I returned to the Sapienza University of Rome, which were my home university and my native city, respectively. L’Aquila w s a highly rewarding experience of scientific growth and personal maturation. Yet, it was also quite a demanding time because of my wife, professor at the Academy of Fine Arts of Naples, and my two kids living in Rome. Probably, fore ign colleagues accustomed to a great permeability between different universities and hosting cities will be a mazed by this observation. But, the Italian social, cultura , and academic environment has always been characterized by a strong sense of local identity, in particular when the original place of scientific activity was a prestigious u niversity (a perception which, luckily, has almost entirel y vanished in recent decades). At the branch of the Department of Structural and Geotechnic al Engineering of the School of Architecture of Rome, I found Patrizia Trovalusci, a fine and highly motivate d young researcher (a tenured position equivalent to an assistant professor) whom I had already met at a couple of con ferences, and who had received her PhD degree three years before. Being quite inexperienced of the peculiar env iro ment of a school of architecture, I did my best for not moving there like an elephant in a crystal shop, and I subs tantially succeeded in this. In particular, I paid strong attention in not exerting the academic power of a new profess r, appointed to establish a quality team in solid and structural mechanics, for bringing the richness, but also t he “weight” and complexity, of my scientific background in nonlinear dynamics of structures and mechanical systems into an environment substantially unaware of them and instead promisingly active in a different field. This was esp ecially true as regards my “assistant” Patrizia, who was just coauthoring some interesting papers on continuum mode ls f masonry, along with an older colleague. In the few years to come, I took some nontrivial effort to properly gras p how much potential was indeed embedded in the more general research program on micropolar and classical conti nua for anisotropic discontinuous materials, which Patriz i was progressively and fruitfully working on. And indeed, ca tching the importance of promoting and supporting an unprecedented, even if quantitatively minimal, quality gr oup also in a different area of research, I maintained the poi nt of not reorienting Patrizia’s scientific activity towards t he completely new area of nonlinear and chaotic dynamics, leaving her full freedom of choice and responsibility in thi s respect. As a matter of fact, this was (and still is) my conceptual position about the correct way to foster the adva ncement of research in whatever scientific environment. I made such a choice despite the high qualities of Patrizia as a scientist, which I readily grasped, despite some timid— and perhaps even fearful—attempts on her side to be involved in my scientific field of reference, completely unknown to her, and even notwithstanding my strong need to create a ne w a d qualified local team in nonlinear dynamics to possibly replace the internationally renowned one I had est abli hed and chaired in L’Aquila until abandoning it with personal regret. In this latter respect, I implicitly and al so somehow generously chose to live like an exiled scientist in his own country, adapting myself to seeking scientific col laborations only with external people, whether they were from the engineering branch (however, quite closed and excl usive) of my new department or from other universities, or international connections. Of course, I clearly manifes ted to Patrizia my scientific confidence in her, providing the reasons behind the freedom of choice left to her, and even tak i g a few steps towards her field of research myself, even if only to a limited extent given the quantity and richne ss of my commitments in the area of nonlinear dynamics: steps that were concerned, in a first stage, with some intrigu ing “soft” issues about the relations among mechanics (of solids and structures), applied mathematics, and (hist orical and contemporary) architectural design, luckily no t