Francesco Mercuri, affectionately called “Franco”, has been a full Professor in Mathematics at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil. In July 1969, he concluded his studies at the Sapienza University of Rome defending a bachelor’s thesis titled “Teoria di Morse e applicazioni”, under the supervision of Claudio Procesi, one of the most influential Italian mathematicians. In 1975, Franco earned his doctoral degree in mathematics from the University of Chicago, with the thesis “Closed geodesics on Finsler manifolds”, under the supervision of Richard Lashof. In 1976 he arrived to Campinas, where both the students of the advanced graduate courses as well as of the basic undergraduates have benefited from its splendid lectures: a neat blackboard, a clear speech with numerous examples and counterexamples, mentioning always recent results and open problems. In the early 1980's Franco became the Graduate Program Coordinator of the Mathematics Department, that nowadays is one of the best-ranked program in Brazil. In the early 1990's, together with some colleagues from the University of São Paulo, he started a joint seminar in Differential Geometry, which is still active, and considered a basic meeting point for graduate students and researchers from throughout the state. Throughout his tenure at Unicamp, Franco made a profound impact on the development of human resources, supervising seven Master’s and fourteen Ph.D. students from Brazil, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Italy. For his academic activities Franco was awarded the Zeferino Vaz prize in 1997, the highest prize at Unicamp, and later, in March 2005, the Ordem Nacional do Merito Cientifico prize, one of the highest at the national level. Franco left an important scientific mark on the Italian community of differential geometers, actively participating in major conferences in the field and teaching for many many years the Differential Geometry course at the summer schools in Perugia (Scuola Matematica Interuniversitaria) and in Cortona. His enthusiasm for teaching the course was so intense that a substantial portion of Italian differential geometers have experienced the beauty of geometry through his guidance. In addition to his creativity and the breadth of his mathematical knowledge, Franco has won during his life the affection of friends and colleagues for his remarkable humanity and serenity, which have made him an exceptional  person.