Engineering geology on the thread of memory

Abstract

The invitation to deliver a talk on his 80th birthday gave Prof. Rinaldo Genevois the opportunity to look back on his life in the light of the evolution of what Applied Geology meant and what it means today. The thread of memory runs over a period of more than 40 years through four different universities where he studied, researched and taught this discipline, progressively changing its content and participating in the continuous expansion of its fields of application. After a brief historical excursus, his journey begins in the late 1960s and ends with his retirement. At the same time, Applied Geology was transformed from a strictly naturalistic science, as defined by Ardito Desio, to a complex and structured discipline as defined by the IAEG in 1970, which can best be denoted by Engineering Geology. The story looks above all at that people who has directly participated in this long journey largely first as students and later as passionate researchers.