00:00Ok, so what represents for you this degree, and if you have a particular relationship with our town, with Palma?
00:09So the degree is a very nice honor, I'm very happy to receive it.
00:15I think what it, I take it to me, is that the sort of academic work that I have done
00:24in the past, the, what I am going to call as a short, useless knowledge, that has all sorts of
00:32other implications, is recognized as something important, and something that should be honored.
00:38So it's not so much me, it's more of the work. As to my relationship with Palma, Cristiano is an
00:49old friend, who I've known now for about 11 years or so, and he's been very nice.
00:56I've come here, this is my second time, I came here in 2015 to be part of the festival, the
01:04Year of the Light, and it's always nice to be here.
01:11Thank you.
01:11Very, very nice.
01:12Thank you.
01:18Yes, I wanted to ask you, why do you think that useless knowledge is actually very useful?
01:26So the term useless knowledge actually comes from a 1939 article by a man named Abraham Flexner, and I like
01:34the term that he used, because all great achievements, all applications, all things that come from engineering or in medicine
01:46that are cures, start with a basic understanding of the world.
01:50And that's what he's talking about when he says, useless knowledge. It seems useless at first, and then it becomes
01:59exceptionally useful as people realize that it's importance.
02:05But we first have to know that information before we can start to use it. And we've seen a really
02:10good example, and that is, we've all been living through this horrible pandemic.
02:16And within a year after it started to be seen everywhere, there were vaccines. Those vaccines didn't come because people
02:27started working on the problem when the first person got sick.
02:31Those vaccines are the result of decades of research that allow people to say that we can take these things
02:41and now apply them and come up with something that can protect people and save lives.
02:47Thank you very much.
02:48It nasce perché abbiamo avuto l'onore di conoscere il professor Cialfi già diversi anni fa, quando qui si tenne
02:55una conferenza in cui lui spiegò le grandissime scoperte che hanno dato origine a lui anche al premio Nobel che
03:02ha conseguito nel 2008.
03:04e da parte nostra si è voluto testimoniare come le scoperte che sono state realizzate in campo scientifico da professor
03:12Cialfi abbiamo avuto poi ricaduti importanti in diversi campi del sapere, tra cui la fisica.
03:18E questa è una testimonianza del valore della ricerca che spazia su settori anche profondamente diversi fra loro ma che
03:26sono accomunati dalle scoperte che possono poi generare a cascata benefici per le persone e per tutta la comunità .
03:34Grazie.
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