Experimental truths that seem to defy any law, research leading to discoveries that surprise even the researcher themselves, the brilliance of physical and mathematical intuition: this is the world that Giorgio Parisi, the author of this book, has been exploring for at least five decades.

From the moment he entered in 1966 (through the back door, since students in their first two years were not allowed to use the main entrance) to the Physics Institute of Rome to the Nobel Prize, which he almost touched at the age of twenty-five, from his groundbreaking studies on particles to his interest in various enigmatic phenomena such as phase transitions, spin glasses, and the flight of starlings, from his reflections on how ideas are born or on the meaning of science in our society, the book you hold in your hands is a journey into the brilliant mind of a physicist who sought the rules of complex systems because the simple ones always seemed a bit boring to him...

"Often, the best work of a lifetime dedicated to research arises by chance: you stumble upon it while crossing a road that leads somewhere else."