U. of C. physicist’s interests included ancient sea creatures
Physicist and fossil hunter Riccardo Levi-Setti began a six-decade career with the University of Chicago in 1956 after spending part of World War II as a teenager hiding from the occupying Germans in Italy.
Family members said he hid in barns and caves in the northern province of Pavia as his parents were sheltered in the apartment of a family friend in their native Milan. He would sometimes sneak out to look for fossils in the surrounding mountains. His formal schooling was limited to tutoring by a graduate student in physics.
The combination of experience and education turned out a scientist who became an expert in trilobites, extinct sea creatures that lived more than 500 million years ago, and developed new tools in microscopy.
“He had many interests,” said retired professor Dietrich Muller. “He started in pure physics and then wound up studying fossils and eventually doing electron and ion microscopy, which had applications in biophysics.”
There was a common thread through those fields: a “certain sense of beauty, of imaging, of pictures,” Muller said.
Levi-Setti, 91, who settled in Hyde Park after coming to Chicago, died of natural causes Nov. 8 after a brief stay in Montgomery Place in Chicago, according to his son Emile Levisetti who, like his brother Matteo, does not hyphenate his last name.
Levi-Setti was born in Milan in 1927. After Italian dictator Benito Mussolini cracked down on Jews, Levi-Setti could no longer go to school and his father’s business was shut down by the fascists, his son said. After their apartment was taken over by the Gestapo, the family fled to Pavia. Circumstances forced his parents back to Milan, where they spent the rest of the war hidden in the apartment of Levi-Setti’s godmother, Elisa Setti.
After the war, Levi-Setti added Setti to his name in honor of all his godmother had done to save his parents. He studied physics at the University of Pavia, getting a doctorate in 1952, his son said.
He was recruited to the University of Chicago by Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi, who fled Italy before the war and oversaw the first nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago in 1942. Levi-Setti was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to travel to the U.S. Family members said he narrowly missed sailing on the Andrea Doria, which sank after a collision as the ship neared New York.
After coming to the U. of C. as a research associate in 1956, he became tenured in 1963 and a full professor in 1965. He was on the school’s faculty for six decades. In 1992, he succeeded Muller as director of the university’s Enrico Fermi Institute, leading the interdisciplinary research unit until 1998.
Levi-Setti worked in multiple areas of physics. Early on, he discovered several subatomic particles, including the first hyperons and heavy mesons. He launched several balloon missions to study cosmic rays, tiny energetic particles from space that rain down on Earth. The data helped direct particle research in the 1970s, as physicists strove to understand the nature of matter in the universe. In the process, he became an expert in techniques to track the paths of particles using photographic emulsions and bubble chambers, which produce stunning images.
He became interested in microscopy and spectrometry, developing and refining techniques for using protons and ions to map the isotopes and surfaces of materials. He built a scanning ion microscope, with which he frequently partnered with colleagues at the University of Chicago Medical Center to image biological items, such as kidney stones, teeth and genetic material.
“The proton microscope he developed, for example, is really something of a tour de force in instrumentation,” said colleague Henry Frisch. “That was something new and different.
“His interest in natural things like trilobites and the structure of the eye was part of his interest in how things are put together, how things work,” Frisch said.
He was also a worldrenowned expert and collector of trilobites, tiny ancient marine creatures that he called the “butterflies of the sea.” Levi-Setti discovered thousands of the fossils on expeditions from Newfoundland to the Czech Republic. “It is time travel, and, at the same time, an addictive treasure hunt,” Levi-Setti wrote in “Trilobites,” his 1975 book on the subject.
Angela Olinto, dean of the division of the physical sciences, said she and LeviSetti studied what are called strange quarks or strange particles. “He was a positive energy for the entire Enrico Fermi Institute and made fundamental contributions in two very different fields: particle physics and trilobites,” she said in an email.
Levi-Setti, a fellow of the American Physical Society, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Leonardo da Vinci Award for Outstanding Achievement in Science, the Steinberg Award of the Association of Applied Paleontological Sciences, and the Commendatore dell’Ordine al Merito, given by the Italian Republic.
In addition to three books on trilobites, he also published two physics textbooks, “Elementary Particles” and “Strongly Interacting Particles.”
“He was a special guy,” Frisch said. “They don’t make them like that anymore.”
In addition to his two sons, he is survived by his wife of 41 years, Nika Semkoff Levi-Setti; and two grandchildren.
His first marriage ended in divorce.
Plans for a memorial service in early 2019 are pending, his son said.