Farewell to Antonino Zichichi, solemn funeral on Friday 13 February in Rome

On 9 February 2026 Antonino Zichichi, a physicist and populariser specialising in the field of particle physics to which he made valuable contributions, died at the age of 96.

This was learned by Ansa from sources in the scientific community. Zichichi was also known to the general public for his battle begun many years ago against astrology and, more generally, against superstitions, which the scientist described as a 'cultural Hiroshima'.

His funeral will be held in solemn form in Rome on Friday 13 February at 4pm in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, in Piazza della Repubblica, Rome. This was announced by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the opening of the Council of Ministers on 11 February 2026, remembering the physicist who died a few days ago and renewing 'the government's condolences to his family and loved ones'.

Zichichi was a somewhat controversial figure within the scientific community itself, on the one hand for his never hidden Catholic faith, for his bitter criticism of the Darwinian theory of evolutionism, which he always considered lacking sufficient scientific evidence and a solid mathematical basis, and for an openly denialist stance towards the relationship between human activities and climate change, claiming the unreliability of the mathematical models used in studies on the subject.

Zichichi has worked at Fermilab in Chicago, an American physics laboratory named after Enrico Fermi, and at the Cern in Geneva, where in 1965 he led the research group that first observed the antideuteron, an antimatter particle formed by an antiproton and an antineutron. He also led the group at the University of Bologna, where he was professor emeritus, during the first experiments on collisions between matter and antimatter at the National Laboratories of Frascati.