The precious treasure of Mariano Valenza: the history of Ludovico Sicardi and the birth of geochemical volcano monitoring

I was lucky enough to meet Mariano Valenza in September
1995. I was hitchhiking on the highway that leads from Cefalù to
Palermo to go back home. I had spent my summer holidays in the
beautiful and wild Madonie mountains. An off-road vehicle (a Land
Rover Defender) stopped and a refined gentleman with a curious and
charismatic gaze offered me a ride. During our journey, we chatted
pleasantly and he told he was originally from that area. When I told
him, I was a Geology student, he smiled at me and said “Then we will
meet again soon, I am going to be your Teacher of Geochemistry!”. After
a few weeks the lessons began and I met again Professor Valenza in
Via Archirafi 36, at the University of Palermo. I will never forget the
first introductive lesson of his course: “… we are going to study how
the chemical elements have formed in the stars, and how these elements
have spread out on our planet; we are going to study the chemicalphysical
laws regulating their geochemical cycles and how they move
in between the atmosphere, the hydrosphere and the lithosphere. We
will also learn how the isotopes of these elements allow us to date the
geological phenomena and the age of our own planet Earth; …let’s
imagine that we are ourselves made of billions and billions and billions
of atoms, and it is statically possible that one of Napoleon atom could
be here, in this class room!”. I was truly fascinated and I discovered my
passion for this interesting subject.
In via Archirafi 36, in the historical building of the University of
Palermo, once home of the Istituto di Mineralogia, I have graduated
and got a Ph.D. in Geochemistry, and still nowadays I am working
there. In these last 25 years I have learnt to know the stories of
different personalities and their scientific researches, which have
been hidden and looked after in the ancient building of the University
for almost one century. With this article, we would like to remember
Professor Mariano Valenza, by telling some stories about him and
some others told by himself. Amongst these extraordinary stories we
have focused on the one of a little-known scientist, Ludovico Sicardi
(1895 - 1987), a modest man who followed his passion for volcanoes.
In his field, he was a true innovator and the present research in the
field of the geochemical surveillance of volcanos is deeply in debt to
him. The “Scuola di Geochimica dei Fluidi”, born in the ‘70s at the
University of Palermo, has the most debt of gratitude to him, but also
the one which has treasured best his memory. This special paper is
dedicated to Professor Valenza, who was one of the founders of this
school and, before that, the teacher of most of this piece’s authors. He
had preserved, beside the historical memory, also many documents,
photos, and the scientific equipment used by Sicardi for his studies.
Sergio Calabrese, Palermo, March 2020