Alessio Pezcoller

Prof. Alessio Pezcoller was born on April 23, 1896 in Rovereto, a small town in the North of Italy, just a few kilometers from Trento, the historical place of the Trento Council in the sixteenth century.

Shortly after his graduation at the Faculty of Medicine at Florence University in 1921, Dr. Pezcoller moved to the University of Milan, at the Surgical School chaired by Professor Mario Donati, one of the most reputed Italian surgeons of those times. In Milan, Dr. Pezcoller qualified for university teaching in surgical pathology and in clinical surgery. Unfortunately, in the mid-1930’s, Prof. Donati was forced to leave Italy, as a consequence of the racial laws against the Jews. Exactly in that period, Trento Hospital was looking for a Chief Surgeon and Prof. Pezcoller decided to take that position in 1937. Since then and for the next 30 years, he was totally absorbed in his work.

Prof. Pezcoller, tall and thin, was a shy and reserved man, proud and almost disdainful, totally involved in his work which represented all his life. He never married and always lived inside the hospital, in a small bare room, close to the operating room. In such a severe and austere context, he developed the idea of the Foundation, aimed to promote biomedical research into the diseases that afflict human beings, that he realized through his foresight and vision and the generous donation of his property.

After retiring in 1966, he spent all energies and time to achieve this goal, until his death on January 27, 1993 at the age of 97.