Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza an Italian geneticist, anthropologist, and researcher, both a scholar and an academician

Human Population Genetics and Genomics
Special Issues
Luca Cavalli-Sforza’s legacy, 100 years after his birth
Letter to Editor

"LUCA, as our father"

Matteo Cavalli-Sforza, Francesco Cavalli-Sforza, Luca Tommaso Cavalli-Sforza, Violetta Cavalli-Sforza

Human Population Genetics and Genomics https://doi.org/10.47248/hpgg2101010002

"When Luca was in Cambridge in 1948–1950, working as a research assistant for Ronald A. Fisher, he would at times walk with his professor through the large garden of the Department of Genetics, where experiments were carried out on different kinds of plants, such as Mendel’s peas and certain polyploids. The two would talk at length. Luca had a lot of questions to ask Fisher, but one day he was asked one himself: “Why do people do science?” Luca thought a while about it – he later confessed that he had never considered this before – then he answered: “Out of curiosity?” “No,” – said Fisher – “They do it out of ambition.”