Elio (1928–2025)

by The STC Team

Los­ing a close friend al­ways sad­dens one deeply, re­gard­less of age. Los­ing a per­son who has so im­mensely in­flu­enced our world­view through his guid­ance and ex­am­ple makes the sad­ness even deeper.

Elio in 2022.

Al­though not un­ex­pected, Elio died last week on Au­gust 14th, aged 97, in the com­pany of loved ones. Elio had been in hos­pice care for a cou­ple of weeks, grow­ing weaker by the day. Yet he re­mained aware of his sur­round­ings; he was still Elio.

We take so­lace by silently ex­claim­ing, "What a won­der­ful life he had!" We rec­og­nize how priv­i­leged we've been in hav­ing known him closely. We will not even be­gin an at­tempt at sum­ming up that won­der­ful life; he did that bet­ter than any of us ever could in Elio's Mem­oirs (PDF, 14 MB) which he self­lessly shared with the world not long ago.

We've been touched by the many sym­pa­thy mes­sages ar­riv­ing at STC. All of them re­call­ing Elio's ex­cep­tional qual­i­ties as a per­son, his in­spi­ra­tional and thought-pro­vok­ing writ­ings, his love of sci­ence and con­ta­gious joy of learn­ing. No one who met Elio could es­cape his pos­i­tive in­flu­ence. Our mem­o­ries of him will help keep op­ti­mism alive.

We are writ­ing these lines, and you are read­ing them, thanks to Elio. This blog is and will al­ways be Elio's brain­child. Al­ways ac­tive and in­quis­i­tive, twelve years af­ter leav­ing be­hind his role as Chair­man of Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy at Tufts Med­ical School and mov­ing to San Diego, and twelve years into his sup­posed re­tire­ment, he started Small Things Con­sid­ered in 2006. To this day, we still feel en­er­gized by him. As our way to honor Elio, we've been tak­ing de­light in read­ing many of his hun­dreds of posts. We in­vite you to do the same. It's easy. Us­ing the search func­tion above, type in "by Elio" and then en­joy his legacy, his Tales from the Blog. We know you'll be pleased, and you will in­vari­ably smile.

¡Elio, nos vas a hacer mucha falta!