The conference will be in Italian, but here is the abtract forour english-speaking friends
In the 17th century, the Dutch cloth merchant Antonie van Leeuwenhoek refined the recently invented microscope to assess the quality of the fabrics he traded. By increasing its magnification to nearly 300 times, he examined the fibers and discovered that… they were moving! Before his eyes appeared a bustling microscopic world, filled with tiny living organisms in constant motion. By reporting these remarkable observations with extraordinary rigor to the Royal Society of London—the world’s leading scientific institution at the time—van Leeuwenhoek laid the foundations of a new discipline: biophysics.
Since then, biophysics has evolved to uncover the mathematical laws that govern the microscopic world: an environment where liquids are as thick as honey and time, as we experience it, seems to lose its meaning. Today we know that some cells move at astonishing speeds relative to their size—the equivalent of a human traveling at over 1,000 km/h—powered by rotary motors that spin at up to 1,000 revolutions per second. We also know that, despite having no brain, eyes, nose, or ears, cells can detect and “see” extremely faint chemical signals, orient themselves, and navigate toward targets as small as one-hundredth the diameter of a human hair. They do this to find nutrients, avoid danger, or hunt their prey. How is this possible?
In this lecture, we will explore how physics and mathematics allow us to understand this hidden microscopic world, revealing that even the simplest forms of life obey sophisticated physical principles and are capable of surprisingly complex decision-making. Along the way, we will challenge our understanding of what it truly means to be intelligent and discover how research on seemingly insignificant microorganisms has profoundly shaped our everyday lives.