Something about  L.F. Richardson: a tribute to a great scientist,  coherent pacifist and prophetic visionary

A.Vulpiani (Sapienza Università Rome)

Lewis Fry Richardson (1881- 1953), had been one of the great scientists of the 20-th century. His name is linked to  many important ideas and methods in different   fields, but also physicists and mathematicians themselves often do not know who he was.

LFR did not follow the main stream of his time: according to G.I. Taylor he seldom thought on the same lines as his contemporaries and often was not understood by them.

During his (almost hidden) life LFR gave  astonishing contributions to science,  anticipating in a visionary way many important ideas and methods which now are widely used,  and often known even at popular level:

- the introduction of the fractal dimension;

- energy cascade in turbulence and idea of self-similarity;

- non gaussian diffusion in turbulence;

- the idea to apply mathematics  to predict the weather;

- anticipation of the idea of parallel computation;

- the first attempt to use mathematics to model the psychology of war.