Piero Pino

AbstractPiero Pino was at the same time an inspired teacher, a creative scientist and an endless organizer. His culture was also very broad allowing him to donate the scientific community valuable contributions in organic and organometallic chemistry, in catalysis and polymer science. In this last field Pino was really a pioneer in combining the molecular approach to the complex supramolecular structure of polymeric materials, and indicated the routes to tailor‐made polymers on the basis of the molecular control of the structure during the polymerization process.Many examples of this approach can be found looking at his impressive and outstanding scientific production where the fundamental aspects were constantly preeminent without disregarding possibilities of technological developments.Thus his name is significantly related to isotactic poly(propylene) where he acted as the real “right hand” of Professor Giulio Natta at the Politecnico (Milano) during the early 50s and gave a remarkable support to make the discovery a still unique scientific event and successively a very important industrial reality. The relevant structural and catalytic questions connected to the stereospecific polymerization where thoroughly investigated by Pino in Pisa, where during 12 years (1956‐1967) he used chiral reagents and monomers to disclose the enantiomorphic sites character and clarify the relations between stereoregularity and optical activity in macromolecules.Successively at the Polytechnic (ETH) in Zürich, Pino approached with renewed enthusiasm the study of homogeneous catalysis for the synthesis of macromolecules, and his very strong chemical culture allowed once again important contributions to the stereochemical features of 1‐olefins polymerization by metallocene catalysts and to the synthesis of CO/1‐olefin alternating copolymers.This is only the mainline of Professor Pino's scientific contribution to macromolecular science; many others aspects were indeed developed thanks to his skilled scientific capacity.Piero Pino died untimely in 1989 and his death was a big lost for the world polymer community, but his memory will certainly survive for many future generations of polymer scientists.