No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Nicola Cabibbo passed away while these proceedings were being collected. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that his ground breaking ideas gave shape to flavor physics as we know it today. This conference proves once again how vital this field of research still is and how much of it is based on his profound insights.
Through the many interests that attracted his brilliant mind, flavor physics kept a special place. We knew this and, since the conference was being held in Italy, we thought that he could once again give the introductory speech to it, as he had done for the 2004 BEACH conference at IIT in Chicago. One of us called him to invite him and he wanted to be reminded what the acronym "BEACH" stood for. When he heard the word "hyperons" he said: "Oh, my beloved hyperons!". By the way, he had accepted, but he called us a few weeks before the conference to tell us that his illness prevented him from traveling.
We wanted to recall this episode not only because it proves his interest in the field, but it also depicts Nicola as a man, always soft-spoken and capable of self-irony.
Great men do not necessarily make great noise.
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