Professor Giuseppe Del Re (1932–2009) was a full professor of theoretical chemistry at the University of Naples, and a full member of the International Academy for Philosophy of Science and the European Academy for Environmental Problems. He was a founding member of the International Centre for Transdisciplinary Research and Studies and was a member of the scientific board of several journals, particularly the international philosophical journals La Nuova Critica, Fiolsofia Oggi and Hyle.
Professor Del Re’s main achievements in his primary research field are marked by the well-known “Del Re Method” for the determination of atom charges in molecules and by the introduction of maximum localization hybrids in the molecular orbital method. Both procedures have been utilized by researchers in the whole world. In the field of epistemology, as a result of lectures on the chemical origin of life, he has carried out research on &ldquot;complexity&rdquot; with special reference to (a) organization as a characteristic of living beings, (b) the mind-body problems, and (c) chemistry and its status as an independent discipline.
In his lifetime, Del Re published over 180 papers, about 170 in internationally recognized scientific and philosophical journals. He was editor of a book on the brain-mind problem published by the Pontifical Academy of Science, translated into Italian and authored a book on the electronic states of molecules. He was research group leader in 1959–62 at RIAS, Baltimore, U.S.A, invited researcher at the Institut de Biologie Physico–Chimique of the University of Paris 1963–1970, and was invited professor in Canada, Germany, France, Peru, and Hungary. His most recent appointment out of Italy was as invited professor at the cole Normale Suprieure in Paris in 1997.
