I do not remember exactly but I'm sure it was in those years, late seventies or early eighties, that I saw for the first time that woman with a strong Tuscan accent and immediately I was fascinated by the way he told the universe that surrounded us.
E 'since then I remained the passion for astronomy.
Some time ago I learned of his death and I realized that time passes for everyone and even those that one considers fixed points in his life, sooner or later disappear. So when some months ago, during one of the usual but always pleasant visits in the bookshop, I ran into Margherita's book without thinking too much about it. Margherita would continue to accompany me, as do the stars fixed in the sky, from the library of the house. The book is written with four hands, with Marco Morelli, director of the planetary science museum of Prato. The two authors are in Trieste and sitting on a bench facing the sea, waiting for a guest who will never arrive, plunge into the memories of Margaret's life. It is the story of a life made of successes and disappointments, of love for science and displeasure for the situation of Italia.Margherita and Marco, with the help of Aldo, Margherita's husband, retrace the life of many small episodes with lightness, highlighting the things in which daisy has always believed. The book is not a true biography, if anything it is a book of memories, seasoned by the piercing jokes of a woman who, in addition to being the greatest Italian astrophysics, was also a woman without hairs on the tongue. I like to remember only one episode of the book , when Morelli speaks about the types of university students, "there are five students with a capital S, students, studenticchi, paraculo and quaquaraqua ..." At the end of the discussion Margherita asks finally what is meant by quaquaraqua, "I quaquaraqua are those who speak, speak, speak and do nothing! [..] They get angry between their meanness, the ambition of wanting to be someone and the intimate awareness of being nobody. "And daisy blurted out:" But these they are our politicians! Other than the students ... "
A truly beautiful, pungent, touching book, to be read in one go and kept in your library forever.
Great Margherita Hack and thanks also to Marco Morelli!
Alessandro Rugolo
