“I’m extremely proud” said the 93-year-old who was deported to Auschwitz as a girl, “especially to be compared to Hypatia”.
Hypatia was a 4th-5th century philosopher, astronomer and mathematician lynched by a Christian mob in Alexandria in 415 AD.
She is the first female scientist whose life and achievements have been detailed.
Born in 1930 into a Milanese family of Jewish origins, in 1938 Segre was expelled from her primary school after the promulgation of the Italian Racial Laws.
In 1943, she was arrested with her family and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
The only survivor among her relatives, with the end of the World War II in 1945, she returned to Milan.
After decades of silence, in the 1990s she started to speak to the public, especially young students, about her experience.
In 2018 President Sergio Mattarella named her Senator for life for outstanding patriotic merits in the social field.
ANSA
