On 7 December, at the INFN Legnaro National Laboratories, the physicist Renato Angelo Ricci was awarded the INFN Medal. This is a prestigious award that the institute decided to confer on those who, like Ricci, have made an exceptional contribution to the history of the Institute. Before Ricci, the medal was awarded to Antonino Zichichi, during the 60th anniversary celebrations of the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture. Ricci is considered the father of nuclear spectroscopy in Italy and has held important roles both within INFN, where he was the first director of the Legnato National Laboratories, and then vice-president of INFN, but also in other prestigious organisations. He was, indeed, president of the Italian Physical Society (SIF) and of the European Physical Society (EPS). He has been the author of numerous contributions in the field of nuclear spectroscopy, heavy ion physics, the history of physics, and interdisciplinary physics, and brought the first electrostatic heavy ion accelerator to Italy – to the Legnaro laboratories: the 16-MV TANDEM linear accelerator.
