English: Giorgio Fiocco (1931–2012) was one of the most prominent Italian scientists. In 1962 at MIT, together with Louis Smullin, he developed the first LIDAR system, aiming a laser beam to the Moon and detecting the return pulse. They called the project “Luna See”, a pun on “lunacy”, because at that time nobody believed this possible. Later on he was full professor of geophysics at the University of Florence, then in Rome, and also president of the Italian Space Agency (ASI). In this photo he is setting up a laser alignment jig for his LIDAR onboard the Geophysica stratospheric aircraft, during the APE-THESEO campaign at Mahé (Seychelles) in 1999. When he arrived there, his students and technicians said that the system was working perfectly, but he insisted to have something to do, so they gave him this, and he was finally happy. He loved this photo and hang up it at home.