Piero Angela

Infobox_person
name=Piero Angela


imagesize=300 px
caption =Piero Angela in 1985
birth_date=birth date and age|1928|12|22
birth_place=Turin, Italy
death_date =
occupation= Science Journalist
Pianist
nationality = flagicon|Italy Italian
salary=
spouse=
children=Alberto Angela

Piero Angela (Turin, 22 December 1928) is an Italian science journalist and pianist.

Biography

Music

Son of the physician and Turinese antifascist Carlo Angela, around the age of seven he began taking private piano lessons and developing interest in jazz music. At the age of twenty, in 1948, he was performing jam sessions in various jazz clubs around Italy. In the same year he was noticed by entrepreneur Sergio Bernardini, who invited him to play at the inaugural evening of the Capannina night club in Viareggio. In the early 1950s he formed - along with batterist Franco Mondini - a musical trio, in which launchings were alternated contrabbassist. The trio often played with other artists, such as Ninì Rosso, Franco Pisano and the ex cornetist of Duke Ellington, Rex Stewart. Angela was then hired by the Italian national TV network RAI and in 1952 stopped his professional music work to devote himself to journalism.

Journalism

His first job at the state broadcasting network was as a reporter and collaborator of the Giornale Radio; with the advent of television (1954) Angela passed to the Newscast, for which was correspondent, first from Paris and then from Brussels, from 1955 to 1968. Together with Andrea Barbato, he was the anchorman of the 13:30 National Newscast's first edition and, in 1976, became the first anchorman of the TG2 newscast.

Influenced by the lesson documentary of Roberto Rossellini, in 1968 Piero Angela realized a series of documentaries from the title "Il futuro nello spazio", on the theme of the program Apollo (whose purpose was to take the first astronaut to the Moon). Thus began his long activity of scientific popularization, that brought him to produce numerous information programs in the following years, including "Destinazione Uomo" (Destination Human - ten episodes), "Da zero a tre anni" (From zero to three - three episodes), "Dove va il mondo?" (Where the world goes - five episodes), "Nel buio degli anni luce" (In the darkness of light-years - eight episodes), "Indagine sulla parapsicologia" (Investigation on parapsychology - five episodes), "Nel cosmo alla ricerca della vita" (In the cosmos seeking for life - five episodes).

Scientific popularization

At the end of the 1970s, Angela decided to entirely devote himself to the production of programs of popularization: the first one, in 1981, was "Quark", that was the first television broadcast of such kind aimed to a general public. The idea, still topical today, was innovative: they used all the technological means available and the resources of the television communication for the themes to be communicated by the average family: the documentaries of the BBC and of David Attenborough, cartoons of Bruno Bozzetto used for explaining the most difficult concepts, interviews with the experts with the clearest possible language in line with the complexity of the subjects, the explanations in studio. From the base program originated many different spin-offs, some of which stil exist: naturalistic documentaries ("Quark speciale" and "Il mondo di Quark"), financial ("Quark Economia") and political (" Quark Europa ").

In 1984 the project "Pillole di Quark" was first aired. It consisted of short spots of thirty seconds about technical, medical, scientific, social and educational subjects. It was aired on Rai Uno. In the same year Piero Angela realized the first "talk-show" with finality of diversion popularization mixture scientific: evenings you are first live with the public, from the Italic Hole, with characters of the world of the culture, of the science, of the show and of the sport on the stage to interact with the stage.

In the 1986 and in the 1987 it realized, from the Sport's hall of Turin in front of eight thousand spectators, two first evenings on Rai Uno on the problems of the climate: atmosphere and oceans, which followed three television series through that the new technologies of graphic representation exploited computer: a trip inside the human body ("La Macchina meravigliosa", in eight episodes), in the prehistory ("Il pianeta dei dinosauri", in four episodes), and in the space ("Viaggio nel cosmo", in seven episodes). Such series, realize with the collaboration of his son Alberto, they were translated in english and sold in over forty Countries europeans, americans and asiatic (Arabic countries and China included).

Of the 1988 it was, also, "Quark italiani", series of documentaries of nature, environment, exploration, world animal products and realized by Italian authors (among which the same Alberto Angela, that realized some documentaries in Africa).

In 1995 it was born "Superquark", during which, the 4 June 1999, the two thousand episodes of the project were celebrated Quark (and relative filiations). Of that same year also him "Speciali di Superquark", evenings dedicated to a single issue of great social, psychological and scientific interest and the collaboration to the television program " Domenica In... ", in which Piero Angela was conductor of a space devoted to culture.

Since 2001, finally, Piero and Alberto Angela are authors of "Ulisse", a program consisting of monographic episodes about historical and scientific subjects.

Parallelly to the popular activity in television, Piero Angela has developed, and it still develops, publishing activity, always to contained informative. From long time it is administrator of the index book «Scienza e società» on the magazine "TV Sorrisi e Canzoni"; he has been, besides, administrator and supervisor of the monthly one "Quark", from himself founded in the 2001 and subsequently loose in the 2006 for lack of funds, that, on the model of the homonym telecast, it treated scientific themes in way accessible to the public. Piero Angela is also author of over thirty books, many of which translated in English, German and Spanish, with a general circulation of over three million copies.

In 1989 Piero Angela was the leading founder of CICAP (to which he still belongs), an association for the investigation of claims on the paranormal, created in order to promote critical thinking and the scientific method in the investigation of anomalous phenomena.

During his long activity Piero Angela has received numerous recognitions in Italy and other countries, among which the Kalinga prize of the UNESCO for the worths in the popularization scientific, and numerous degrees "honoris causa" (currently eight).

Although he abandoned professional music work in 1952, Piero Angela has remained a student of jazz, although only as dilettante: it is not infrequent, when one of his programs touches matters somehow connected with music, such as acoustic phenomena, to see him play the piano together with known professional jazz players.

Television programs

All the following programs have been transmitted by Raiuno.
* "Il futuro nello spazio" (1968)
* "Destinazione uomo" (1971)
* "Da zero a tre anni"
* "Dove va il mondo?"
* "Nel buio degli anni luce"
* "Indagine sulla parapsicologia" (1978)
* "Nel cosmo alla ricerca della vita" (1980)
* "Quark" (since 1981), that it has produced a transmissions's whole family:
** "Pillole di Quark" (since 1983)
** "Il mondo di Quark" (since 1984)
** "Quark Economia" (1986)
** "Quark Europa" (1986)
** "Quark Speciale"
** "Quark Scienza"
** "Enciclopedia di Quark" (1993)
** "Superquark" (since 1994)
** "Speciali di Superquark" (since 1999)
* "La macchina meravigliosa" (1990)
* "Serata Oceano" (1991)
* "Il pianeta dei dinosauri" (1993)
* "Viaggio nel cosmo" (1998)

Trivia

* In February 2006, on the eve of the 2006 Italian political elections, the website of the " Corriere della Sera " newspaper polled readers as to which journalist they would have preferred to moderate the imminent television debate among the two candidates to lead the government, Romano Prodi and Silvio Berlusconi. Piero Angela, a mainly science-oriented journalist, surprisingly won the survey, beating a substantial team of political journalists. Interviewed by the "Corriere", Angela declared he was not interested in the job. The two debates were then moderated by Clemente Mimun and Bruno Vespa. [Luca Gelmini. [http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Politica/2006/02_Febbraio/13/angela.shtml «I lettori hanno deciso: Angela moderatore» («The readers have decided: Angela moderator»)] , interview to Piero Angela from the "Corriere della Sera on line", 15 February 2006] . ]

* In his Roman home, he owns a precious collection of Roman Imperial vases and a complete skeleton of Compsognathus longipes.

References