Anna Consortini recalls Denardo's involvement in the collaborations between ICO and the ITCP. 

Contact between ICO and the ICTP started in 1991 with collaborations "on schools" and on "information 'on and to' optical scientists in the third world" (an item at the ICO Bureau meeting in 1991). The ICO president at the time, Chris Dainty, was invited by Gallieno Denardo to serve as a director in the 1992 ICTP training college.

The official collaboration started with the joint organization of the Winter College on Optics (8-26 February 1993), where ICO took care of the scientific organization. ICO devoted considerable importance to this initiative, with the involvement of the ICO president and two vice-presidents (P Hariharan and me) as directors, and several ICO Bureau members or past members as teachers.

A set of hands-on experiments for the students was also planned in the laboratory, which was at that time located at the ICTP. The organization of the experiments deserves some detailed explanation. As the laboratory was mainly equipped with instruments donated by different institutions for laser measurements, the teachers were asked to organize the experiments of interest by borrowing the necessary material from their home laboratories for the duration of the winter college.

At the Winter College 2004, Denardo and ICO/ICTP award winners Revati N Kulkarni and Imrana Ashraf Zahid look on as ICO president René Dändliker cuts the the ICTP 40th anniversary cake. This is a typical photograph of Denardo, standing modestly behind the scenes of his successful activities

A great organizer
I first had an opportunity to work with Gallieno Denardo in Trieste, selecting the students for the college in the summer of 1992, and I realized the kind of organizer and hard worker he was, and also how great his humanity was. There were many more suitable applicants than places available and he was very concerned about this. Without doubt the college was very much appreciated and he immediately started thinking of another one to allow others to attend. The second Winter College took place in 1995, including the laboratory experiments.

Since 2000 the ICO/ICTP award has been delivered during the college. Here is a short background to the award.

Gallieno Denardo and Gert Von Bally at the ICTP on 29 June in possibly one of the last photographs of him

In previous years Denardo had established and personally funded the Sarwar Razmi prize, to honour the memory of an ICTP associate and personal friend. Denardo worried that the prize would not last for many years. Meanwhile, I was involved with the problem of the ICO awards: there were the well known ICO prize and the Galileo Galilei award, but I felt the need also to think of young people from developing countries. Denardo and I considered that a solution might be to propose to the ICO and ICTP authorities the creation of a joint award. I presented the idea to the ICO Bureau meeting in San Francisco in 1999, and I spoke about making a formal proposal the subsequent year. The bureau found the idea of immediate interest and solicited the proposal for the meeting of the old and new bureau a few days later. The subsequent days were very productive as Gallieno and I, working by telephone, prepared the proposal by establishing in detail the contribution of the two institutions. That same week the ICO Bureau and the ICTP approved "a proposal by Gallieno Denardo and Anna Consortini" to establish a joint prize, the ICO/ICTP award, devoted "to young researchers from developing countries who conduct their research in a developing country."

The award has now been delivered to nine young scientists from eight countries from across the world. This may be the moment to begin an official proposal to call this award the "ICO/ ICTP Gallieno Denardo award". This would be an act by the optics community to promote the permanent dissemination of his legacy.

Anna Consortini, ICO past-president (1997-1999).