FAUSTINO SAVOLDI: L’UOMO, L’AMICO, LO STUDIOSO

On January 14, 2016, Faustino Savoldi, a member of the Istituto Lombardo and one of the protagonists of the Pavia and Italian neurological sciences in the second half of the twentieth century was missing. Born in Brescia on July 4, 1930, after his high school studies in his hometown, he enrolled in the medical faculty of Pavia in 1949 where he took the first steps of his scientific career, graduating in 1955, under the guidance of Carlo Berlucchi. Probably influenced by the master he turned to the electrophysiological study of the nervous system and soon became one of the pioneers of experimental electroencephalography. The research sectors he sponsored were those related to clinical and experimental epilepsy, to the pathogenesis of vertigo, to language disorders, to the taxonomic nosography of headaches, to physiological and pathological neuroendocrine mechanisms, to cerebrovascular diseases. A scholar with vast interests, he published important essays for the critical interpretation of various neuropsychiatric topics, also evaluated from a philosophical perspective. At the same time his university career flourished culminating with the chair of Neurology at the University of Pavia and the scientific direction of the Neurological Institute Casimiro Mondino until 1989. In the last years, after retirement, Savoldi had dedicated himself to a titanic enterprise, to write a treatise on the problem of consciousness, which came to an end in 2013. The present essay outlines his scientific and human figure.