Roberto Burgio On the occasion of his 70th birthday
On 30 April 1989, Giuseppe Roberto Burgio will be celebrating his 70th birthday in Pavia. On that day, innumerable colleagues, pupils and friends of this eminent paediatrician and eminently lovable person will be thinking of him, in gratitude and with heartfelt good wishes, as a man combining the warmth and cordiality of the southerner and the northerner's sober, scientific approach to work in the happiest possible way.
Born in Palermo, Roberto Burgio took his course of study in medicine (and also 2 years of legal studies) at the university there, and in 1943 started work at the University Hospital for Children in the same city, where M. Gerbasi was then medical director. In 1948, Roberto Burgio qualified as a lecturer at the University Hospital. He quickly progressed to the position of chief physician, and in the early 1950s he documented the possibility of curing perniciosiform anaemia, reported by his tutor to occur in breastfed infants of parents in the lower socioeconomic classes, by giving small doses of vitamin BI2 by mouth.
In 1962, Burgio was appointed full professor and director of the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Perugia, and in January 1966 he was called to succeed E. Sartori as professor of paediatrics at the University of Pavia, where he looked forward to increased opportunities for professional development.
In Pavia he devoted himself with great energy to the foundation of a new children's hospital. The culmination of his efforts came in 1981, when the hospital, dealing with every aspect of paediatrics, first opened it doors, going on to become a model paediatric centre, where sick children could be cared for on the wards or in the out-patient clinics and where teaching and research were also practised. Roberto Burgio's name will continue to be linked with this important centre.
Burgio has the ability to find highly gifted people to work with him, and to inspire them with enthusiasm for tackling new problems; he is generous with encouragement for their professional endeavours. In view of these qualities, he is a popular tutor and it is in no way surprising that a goodly number of chairs of paediatrics and a good many chief physicians' posts outside the university community have already been filled from the ranks of his former pupils.