Giovanni Bignami
Giovanni F. Bignami graduated in physics in 1968 at the University of Milan, in the group of Prof. Giuseppe Occhialini. Since then he has worked in space research, taking part in the main activities in this field in Italy, Europe and the United States from the 1970s to the present day. He has been actively involved in the design and construction of many scientific satellites. Between 1988 and 1997 he was appointed Principal Investigator of ESA’s XMM-Newton mission. From his collaborations with the COS-B and XMM-Newton missions came one of his main scientific discoveries: the neutron star Geminga. From 1970 to 1990 he was a researcher at the CNR. In 1990 he was appointed full professor of general physics at the University of Cassino. In 1997 he was appointed full professor of Astronomy at the University of Pavia. From 1997 to 2002 he was also Scientific Director of the Italian Space Agency, where he launched, among other things, ASI’s small-missions programme. From 2003 to 2006 he was Director of the Centre d’Étude Spatiale des Rayonnements in Toulouse, one of the most important space centres in France. He was called to sit on the Research Evaluation Committee of the French space agency (CNES). From January 2004 to January 2007 he was President of the Space Science Advisory Committee (SSAC) of the European Space Agency, which drafted the agency’s scientific planning document, Cosmic Vision 2015-2025. On 16 March 2007 the Council of Ministers appointed Prof. Giovanni Bignami President of the Italian Space Agency, a position he held until 1 August 2008, when the extraordinary commissioner regime of the Agency — started by Council of Ministers no. 11 of 18 July 2008 — became effective. He was an unsuccessful candidate at the 2009 European Elections (6-7 June 2009) for the Democratic Party in Constituency 1 (Lombardy, Piedmont, Aosta Valley, Liguria) with the slogan “More research in Italy, more future in Europe”.
Since July 2010 he has been President of COSPAR (Committee on Space Research). Since 10 August 2011 he has been President of INAF (National Institute for Astrophysics).