Death of Roberto Cervellati at age 92,Italian physicist and explorer, traffic collision

Roberto Cervellati, an Italian physicist and explorer, died aged 92 on November 7, 2026, in a traffic collision.

Born in Rome, he died there. A researcher at ENEA, he became a leading figure in the history of Italy’s scientific expeditions to Antarctica.

He took part in seven expeditions to the polar continent, serving as mission leader on some of them. Within Italy’s National Antarctic Research Program, known as PNRA, Cervellati held responsibilities for scientific coordination as well as operational matters. His career thus combined research work at ENEA with repeated participation in Antarctic field missions and responsibilities within the national program that organized the research. The seven expeditions placed him among the recurring participants in Italy’s polar science effort; his work as a mission leader and his coordination and operational roles reflected different parts of that effort. Cervellati’s biography linked Rome, where he was born and died, with the Italian scientific presence in Antarctica.