Mbizzarri,+12 Sermonti Giuliani

Organisms
Vol. 2, 2 (December 2018)

ISSN: 2532-5876
Open access article licensed under CC-BY
Journal of Biological Sciences
giuseppe sermonti. in memoriam
Giuseppe Sermonti (Rome 1925 – December 16, 2018)
An inspired forerunner at the Universities of Palermo and Perugia, President of

the Italian Genetic Society.
In the night between 15 and 16 December 2018, a bril- Then, something happened. The free spirit and the
liant scientist and - much more relevant - a free spirit, refined intellectual at home from microbiology to an-
left this (relatively comfortable) valley of tears. cient philosophy, ethnic studies and literature came out
Giuseppe Sermonti took a degree in Agronomical and highlighted the menace to creative science hidden
Sciences at Pisa University, followed by a Biology doc- in scientist ideology and economy-driven research (Ser-
torate at ‘Sapienza University’ of Roma. He started his monti, 1971; 1974). Sermonti claims, even if still ‘out-
scientific career at the ‘International Centre of Micro- of-the-choir’, are now (more-or-less) freely debated (see
biological Chemistry’ (CICM) of Istituto Superiore di Lazebnick’s paper in this issue, and also Geman and
Sanità having Ernst Boris Chain as director. Chain dis- Geman (2016), but in the seventies this was not the case.
covered how to isolate and concentrate the germ-kill- Giuseppe Sermonti suddenly became a ‘bigot’, a traitor
ing agent produced by Penicillium n., and predicted of the scientific community. Up to this point, the critics
the beta-lactam structure of penicillin. For this research, were ideologically oriented and largely unmotivated,
Chain, Florey, and Fleming received the Nobel Prize in but Giuseppe Sermonti was still considered a ‘scientist
1945. When Giuseppe Sermonti joined the CICM, his that was wrong’. He was definitely sent to the hell of the
interest was the selection of most productive Penicilli- enemies of humankind by the (un)Holy Inquisition of
um strains, along this research work he discovered the correct scientific thought only when he dared to high-
sexual mating of Penicillium and Streptomyces, putting light some scientific shortcomings of neo-Darwinian
the bases of modern industrial biotechnology (Sermonti approach (Sermonti, 1999).
G., 1969). This discovery opened to prof. Sermonti a Even in this case, he anticipated many nowadays-ac-
brilliant academic career: he was Professor of Genetics cepted perspectives in evolution - just as those largely
discussed by Denis Noble (2015), but in the nineties,
96 Organisms 2 (1): 117-118
the situation was different. Mariano Bizzarri told me of

the ostracism he had to face from both professors and
some fanatic students (members of the communist so-
called ‘collective of Rome’) when he organized a lecture
at Sapienza University, in which Giuseppe Sermonti
presented his claims and the updated edition of the
book Forget Darwin (Dimenticare Darwin). Violent and
scientific un-motivated critics, personal threats, letters
to the newspapers as well as public petitions to prevent
the presentation of the book: the scientist ideology at
its worst!
In the meanwhile, Giuseppe Sermonti founded the
Osaka Group for the Study of Dynamic Structures that took
seriously into consideration the ideas of another ‘free
thinker’, as C. H. Waddington, putting the bases of what
is now ‘regular science’ under the heading of ‘dynam-
ical epigenetics’. Many prominent (and free-minded)
scientists composed the Osaka group: Dave Lambert,
Brian C. Goodwin, Atuhiro Sibatani, Franco M. Scudo,
Francisco J. Varela, Antonio Lima-de-Faria, Mae-Wan
Ho, Lev V. Belousov, Jerry Webster, René Thom, Hugh
Paterson, Stephen Jay Gould, together with the brilliant
Italian physicist Giuliano Preparata.
Giuseppe Sermonti was right, and his scientific
thought revenged, but the battle never ends, free scien-
tific thought is nowadays facing a more subtle menace:
no more spectacular ‘auto-da-fe’ but a glacial silence
(and lack of funding) for theses out of the mainstream.
To break this deadly ice is the main aim of Organisms
and this is why we commemorate Giuseppe Sermonti in
the ‘noisy silence’ of other scientific and cultural voices.
References
Sermonti G., 1969, Genetics of Antibiotic-Producing Microorgan-
isms, Wiley & Sons, London
Sermonti G., 1971, Crepuscolo dello scientismo, Rusconi ed.
Sermonti G., 1974, La mela di Adamo, la mela di Newton, Rusconi,
Rimini
Lazebnik Y., 2018, Who is Dr. Frankenstein?, Organisms, this
issue.
Geman D., and Geman S., 2016, Science in the age of selfies,
PNAS, vol. 113 (34), p. 9384-9387.
Sermonti G., 1999 (2003), Dimenticare Darwin. Ombre sull’evolu-
zione, Rusconi, Rimini
Noble D., 2015, Evolution beyond Neo-Darwinism: a new
conceptual framework. Journal of Experimental Biology, vol.
218(1), p. 7-13.
di Alessandro Giuliani
Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Viale Regina Elena 299, 00161, Roma, Italy.
alessandro.giuliani@iss.it

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Organisms

Vol. 2, 2 (December 2018)

Journal of Biological Sciences

giuseppe sermonti. in memoriam

Giuseppe Sermonti (Rome 1925 – December 16, 2018)

An inspired forerunner at the Universities of Palermo and Perugia, President of

the situation was different. Mariano Bizzarri told me of

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