Happy Birthday Elio!

by Roberto and the STC team
 

Elio. Source: STC

Not long ago, Elio offered some musings "On Old Age." As is often the case when reading Elio's writings, the first couple of sentences already taught me several lessons. For one, I learned a new word, senectitude. I suspect I will be using it more and more with each passing day. But there was more, Elio revealed that his birthday would be "in a couple of months." Well, here we are, a couple of months have gone by and today is Elio's birthday! A great day for us at STC as well as all of our readers to celebrate his remarkable achieve­ments, particularly as they pertain to the longevity of this blog. How does he do it, time and time again expeditiously writing succinct, clear and insightful posts? While most of us trained in ex­perimental sciences generally suffer something akin to agraphia, Elio once confided that he suf­fered from hypergra­phia. But that word by no means does justice to his writing. Lucid hypergra­phia I would prefer to call it. However you do it, Elio, we remain in awe of your special gift for writ­ing.
 

Elio offered a special detail about this particular birthday: "my age will be divisible by 31 (no, I won't be 62 years old, nor 124)." I suspect that there was a hidden message in his asking us to fi­gure out that his age would be three times 31. Why the special emphasis on 31? Makes sense to me; 31 being prime, Elio was clearly alluding to the fact that he is indeed privileged to be thrice in his prime. I will not let the numbers stop. I first met Elio some time ago, in 1978. It will not take long for you to figure out that he was 50 then. Nothing magical about that number, except that I was 1/2 his age then. Elio: I am doing my best, I am now almost 3/4 your age. But I am afraid I will never catch up. Not to your writing skills, I am afraid.
 

Wait, if we met in 1978, we've known each other 43 years. Again, a prime number. Which prompts me to say: "Caro Elio, è stata un'amicizia di prim'ordine!!" Many thanks for all that you have taught me, great friend.