Giorgio Parisi has calculated how the spread of infection goes and sat on the TV screen and explained the corona situation to the Italians.

When it was announced in October that the popular professor had been awarded one half of the Nobel Prize in Physics, Italy cheered. 

- You have meant so much to me, says a student at Rome University Sapienza who comes forward and asks for a selfie with him.

Many people want selfies with Parisi

When Giorgio Parisi takes his grandson Martino and the rest of the family to Rome's botanical garden in the late afternoon, strangers respectfully step forward and ask to be photographed next to him.

Giorgio Parisi says a few words to them and smiles in a picture.

Then he continues to play with his grandson.

In the research world, Giorgio Parisi has long been something of a celebrity.

According to colleagues and friends, he has an extra ordinary mathematical ability.

One of them is Angelo Vulpiani who is a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Sapienza in Rome.

Sees the solution quickly

- Good researchers make a lot of calculations.

But Giorgio Parisi can see the solution before making any calculations.

He only counts to check that his solution is correct, he says.

Irene Giardina is also a professor of theoretical physics at Sapienza and she got to know Giorgio Parisi in the 1990s when she started working for him.

- He taught me a new way to do research.

Physics is about explaining physical phenomena, the language you use to do it is mathematics.

But before you develop your method, you need to have some kind of intuition about what's going on.

For Giorgio Parisi, this is a very developed trait, but the rest of us can learn it, says Irene Giardina.

Early Nobel Prize-tipped

But the one who has known Giorgio Parisi for the longest time is his wife Danielle Parisi.

They met when they were 20 years old and both studied at the university.

A classmate introduced them to each other and said:

  "This is Giorgio Parisi, he will receive the Nobel Prize one day!"

- I did not believe it at all!

But after a while I realized that he was very smart, but it never happened so I stopped believing it!

Says Danielle Parisi.

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