Dear Colleagues,
I regret having to inform you that Franco Pacini died in Florence.
Just before the discovery of the first pulsar (Hewish et al. 1968), Franco Pacini published a paper in Nature (vol. 216, 1967, p.567) on a possible emission mechanism which could power the Crab nebula. He proposed a rapidly rotating neutron star with a strong magnetic field emitting dipole radiation. After the discovery of the first pulsar, Pacini (1968) and Gold (1968), independently, suggested that pulsars are rotating neutron stars.
Best regards
Ignazio Bombaci