At the age of 96, the geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza died, famous for having laid the foundations of population genetics and for having demonstrated the scientific groundlessness of the concept of the human race. Born in Genoa on January 25, 1922, he died in Belluno, where he lived. His scientific career had begun in Great Britain, and since the 50s it has continued between Italy, where he taught at the University of Pavia, and the United States, at Stanford University.

After studying in Turin at the school of Giuseppe Levi, as before him had done Rita levi Montalcini, Salvador Luria and Renato Dulbecco, Cavalli Sforza had begun his scientific career at the University of Pavia with the pioneer of Italian genetics, Adriano Buzzati Traverso.