Emilio Gatti short bio

Emilio Gatti (Torino, 18 marzo 1922 – Milano, 9 luglio 2016) began his activity in 1948 in Nuclear Electronics at CISE, Milan Italy. Professor at Politecnico di Milano since 1951 (full professor since 1957 and emeritus in 1998). Life-long associated to the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics, INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare), that he contributed to found in 1951. Since 1973 Senior Visiting Scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, for 30 years collaborating with Veljko Radeka and the late Pavel Rehak. Among his most brilliant achievement which played a revolutionary role:

• the charge preamplifier to perform minimum noise measurements of the charge deposited in radiation detectors (at the time ionization chambers)
• the conception jointly with the friend and colleague Pavel Rehak of the Sideward Depletion together with the invention of the Silicon Drift Detector
• the sliding scale technique to improve the differential non-linearity in ADCs.
• countless relevant studies on optimum filtering that resulted also in a lengthy monograph jointly written with the late friend and colleague Franco Manfredi.

IEEE Fellow since 1973, received the IEEE Centennial Medal in 1988 and the IEEE Radiation Instrumentation Outstanding Achievement Award in 2004, member of the Italian Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze since 1983, received in 1986 the Feltrinelli award.
Emilio was great man, a gifted teacher and a brilliant researcher. With a multifaceted and original intelligence he served as a mentor and role model for generations of students and colleagues. His legacy is the most precious gift for all of us: his simplicity, his kindness and his habit of sharing scientific ideas and results.