Manifesto
Swedish Students wearing the traditional tailcoat with a white hat at the PhD promotion ceremony at Uppsala University
The personal story of a researcher probably is less important than his achievements. However, research is seldom the simple sum of ideas, technical means and economical resources. May be there is something else worth to be told, that for shyness we tend to hide. I will use a few square centimeters of paper to remember how I arrived at Uppsala.
In the place where I was born and in the years during which I went to school, studying was not for everybody. Soon you understood to belong to a different category of people, the ones that had to wrestle for earning the possibility of staying there. On your shoulder you felt the burden of those who left, strangled by a difficult life. And you had to keep on going, on a path that nobody of your friends and relatives scoured before you.
Alone and deep in thought
I measure with slow and lingering steps
the deserted fields,
ready to flee if my eyes discern
a human footprint in the sand (1).
My loneliness was warmed by the words of the masters, depicting the joy of knowledge and the desire of a mad flight beyond the pillars of Hercules.
Consider ye the seed from which ye sprang;
Ye were not made to live like unto brutes,
But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.
So eager did I render my companions,
With this brief exhortation, for the voyage,
That then I hardly could have held them back.
And having turned our stern unto the morning,
We of the oars made wings for our mad flight,
Evermore gaining on the larboard side (2).
Many I met during the travel. Many accompanied me along the road, but then left for their own way.
Many helped me: teaching me something or making me feel beloved. Now I am in debt to a lot of persons. If someone asks whether it was worthwhile, I will use the words of others:
Often it happens to explain to a young person why studying is profitable. It is useless to say that it is for love of knowledge, if he has not any love for knowledge. Neither it is useful to say that the man who knows, faces events of life better than one who does not know, because he may point at someone that, although very learned, leads a miserable life. And then the unique answer is that the exercise of knowledge creates relationships,closenesses, affections, make us know some other Parents, different from our blood ones, make us live more, because we will rememember not only our life, but also others life, establish a fine thread going from our youth (sometimes childhood) until today. And all this is marvelous (3).
Gaetano Perchiazzi
From my PhD Thesis:
Perchiazzi G. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) in the assessment of respiratory mechanics.
Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2004.
Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine 1389. Uppsala. ISSN 0282-7476 ISBN 91-554-6090-9
References
(1 ) Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374): Il Canzoniere (Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta), componimento XXXV. Translation by William H. Fredlund
(2) Dante Alighieri (1265-1321): La Divina Commedia, Inferno, Canto XXVI. Translation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(3) Umberto Eco (1932 – living): Come si paga un debito a rate (How to pay a debt by instalments ). In: L’Espresso 30th October 2003, Personal Translation