Myth, Chaos, and Certainty: Notes on Cosmos, Life, and Knowledge

Rosolino Buccheri, retired research director in astrophysics and cosmic physics, National Research Council (CNR), Italy, was the leader of the Palermo CNR group for the European Space Agency and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration international space missions in high-energy astrophysics. Among the most important results of the group were (i) the discovery of pulsed gamma radiation from the Crab Nebula and Vela pulsars and (ii) the discovery of the first superfast binary pulsar, PSR1953+29, from the Arecibo Radio Observatory (Puerto Rico). Dr. Buccheri was director of the Instituto di Fisica Cosmica e Applicazioni dell'Informatica (four times between 1985 and 1990) and the Area della Ricerca (1989-2000), both CNR. He was also visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institut fur Extraterrestrische Physik, Germany; Cornell University, USA; the University of Potchefstroom, South Africa; Nottingham University, Great Britain; and the Astronomical Institute of Tatranska Lomnica, Slovakia. In addition, he was a scientific referee of the international journals Astronomy and Astrophysics, Astrophysical Journal, and Experimental Astrophysics and has co-directed international conferences on astrophysics and the nature of time. He has published 6 books in Italian, authored more than 200 scientific publications in international journals, and co-authored the book L'idea del Tempo with Margherita Hack and Pippo Battaglia.