Physicist and best-selling writer
Carlo Rovelli has been cancelled from representing Italy at next
year's Frankfurt Book fair, where Italy is a special guest,
after criticising Defence Minister Guido Crosetto after an
escalation of the war in Ukraine at the Labour Day leftwing
concert in Rome.
Rome's extraordinary commissioner for the event, politician and
journalist Ricardo Franco Levi, wrote to Rovelli Friday saying
his presence at the German book fair might have been an
embarrassing perpetuation of the row that followed the
physicist's broadside, in which he did not specifically name
Crosetto.
Crosetto on May 2 replied to criticism over alleged warmongering
directed at him by Rovelli from the stage of the traditional May
Day concert in Rome by inviting his critic to lunch.
On Saturday he told reporters "leave me out of your rows" and
noted that Rovelli and Levi were friends.
Speaking to an estimated 300,000 people gathered in Rome's
Piazza San Giovanni on Labour Day for the marathon gig organised
by trades union confederations CGIL, CISL and UIL, theoretical
physicist and science populariser Rovelli denounced current
military spending and "peddlers of instruments of war".
"We are moving towards a war that is growing, and instead of
seeking solutions, countries are challenging each other,
invading, fanning the flames of war, and international tension
has never been as high as it is now," said Rovellii.
"In Italy, the defense minister has been very close to one of
the biggest arms manufacturers in the world, Leonardo," he
added.
Crosetto, a founder member of Premier Giorgia Meloni's rightwing
Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, is the former president of
industrial association Confindustria's Federation of Italian
Companies for Aerospace, Defence and Security (AIAD).
Verona-born Rovelli, 67, is a theoretical physicist and writer
who has worked in Italy, the United States and, since 2000, in
France.
He is also currently a Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at
the Perimeter Institute, and core member of the Rotman Institute
of Philosophy of Western University.
He works mainly in the field of quantum gravity and is a founder
of loop quantum gravity theory. He has also worked in the
history and philosophy of science.
He collaborates with several Italian newspapers, including the
cultural supplements of the Corriere della Sera, Il Sole 24 Ore
and La Repubblica.
His popular science book, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, was
originally published in Italian in 2014. It has been translated
into 41 languages[6] and has sold over a million copies
worldwide.
In 2019, he was included by Foreign Policy magazine in a list of
100 most influential global thinkers.
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