Ahmadhou Wagué describes how Denardo created links between African scientists and the international community.
 
It all started with an article that I wanted to submit as a reprint to the ICTP in August 1986. I had been told to contact Prof. Gallieno Denardo in the first instance, and I must say that on that day I had the opportunity to meet a formidable man. In particular I was struck by his bursts of friendly laughter. Since then, each year when I returned to Trieste for various activities at the ICTP, and particularly for the Winter Colleges organized by Prof. Denardo, I was always very happy to meet and work with him to organize the seminars on lasers, atomic and molecular physics. It was very special and comforting to work with him. I remember we used to meet very early in the morning in his office because he was always an early bird at the ICTP. After these meetings I always left his office with at least one positive answer to the many problems involved in the development of sciences in Africa.

During the two decades when I had the privilege to work with Prof. Denardo, he helped the African scientific community, working with the ICTP, to make qualitative steps in the development of the optical sciences in Africa. He created, with the support of Prof. Abdus Salam and several African scientists, the African Laser, Atomic, Molecular and Optical Sciences (LAM) Network. He initiated the creation of all of the ICTP-affiliated centres in Africa. In addition, he helped and supported the organization of several meetings on physics or mathematics in many African countries (e.g. Ivory Coast, Benin, Senegal, Ghana, Sudan, Cameroon, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, Ethiopia, Gambia, Mozambique and Zambia).

Left to right: Ahmadhou Wagué, Gallieno Denardo and Dr Barry at the 1995 biennial conference of science and technology, AFRISTECH, in Dakar, Senegal. Denardo was awarded Knight of the Lion National Order, the highest distinction accorded by the president of the Republic of Senegal.

Africa's 'good fairy'
Thanks to Denardo, many African researchers, who at the beginning were very isolated, became associate members of the ICTP, and many others have benefited from fellowships on the Sandwich Training Educational Programme, which was initiated by him with the IAEA. Many other African scientists also benefited from the fellowship programme that he initiated with the International Centre for Science and High Technology. In addition, during the last three years, Prof. Denardo fought to make TSOSA operational, with the tentative creation of the mentoring programme and of a permanent optics group at the ICTP. In fact, it can be said that Prof. Denardo was Africa's "good fairy" at the ICTP. He established useful and fertile interactions between African scientists and the international scientific community. Thus, with the ICTP's support, the LAM organized several international conferences, workshops and schools on lasers and optical sciences all over Africa.

Thanks to these activities the LAM became an international society member of ICO. And thanks to Denardo's continuous intermediation, several African countries became members or observers at the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. Moreover, he helped to create bonds between African scientists and several international optics societies, such as ICO, the Optical Society of America, the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers and Optics within Life Sciences. In the same way, he was at the beginning of the fertile scientific co-operation that exists between the LAM Network and the University of Lund in Sweden, and with the International Programme in Physical Sciences at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, which receives financial support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. With Prof. Abdus Salam, Prof. Denardo supported the creation of bonds of scientific co-operation between the African diaspora in the US and the African scientific community of physicists and mathematicians by creating the Edward Bouchet Abdus Salam Institute.

Denardo was a true internationalist
Prof. Denardo was an untiring combatant, and that to the last breathe, for the development of optical sciences in Africa, and he was a friend who was always present to create opportunities for scientific co-operation. Each visitor at ICTP, whether African, Asian, European or American, believed that he was the best friend of Prof. Denardo. That shows how much he was open with all, and in truth one must say that Prof. Denardo was a true internationalist. In fact at ICTP one can say that he incarnated truly the ideal of Prof. Abdus Salam to make universal the sharing of science.

Prof. Denardo, you left us suddenly this Monday 23 July of the year 2007, but to paraphrase the Senegalese poet Birago Diop, in Africa we believe that the dead are not dead, that they are in the running water, that they are in the blowing wind, that they are in the newborn child. But you Prof. Denardo, moreover, you are in the laser light of our laboratories that we created together, you are in the pages of the books, in the memories and on the screens of the computers that we are using at the ICTP affiliated centres, you are in the doctoral theses and in the articles written by our students. You will always be with us during the activities of the LAM and ICO. In the corridors, the offices, seminar rooms and lecture halls of ICTP we will always hear your bursts of laughter so sincere and so friendly.

On 31 May 2007 in Trieste, at the Africa Day ceremony dedicated to Africa by ICTP, like a premonition African scientists unanimously paid sympathetic homage to your person, urbi et orbi.

Today, Prof. Denardo, Africa with endless acknowledgement from the depths of the savannas, deserts and forests, beyond the frontiers of space and time, wants to say: "Thank you Prof. Denardo. Lie in peace, dear Gallieno."

Ahmadhou Wagué, LAM Network coordinator and president.