ABSTRACT
I met Adalberto for the first time in November 1972: I was a first year student in Mathematics and he was my Algebra Professor. I do remember those tough days pretty well: the word “set” was completely new to me and each every time, at the end of Adalberto’s lesson, I thought I got an Arabic class instead of an Algebra one. Then suddenly, during Christmas time, I felt I could understand everything and that everything was so beautiful that, in the end, I gave up a very fancy interest for cybernetics (!) and decided to get more Algebra courses. Thus, in the next years, I followed two more courses by Adalberto and also got the honour to have him as my thesis advisor. Since then a never-ended collaboration began. Adalberto is not only a very clear teacher; he has the special gift of capturing your attention leading you inside the subject. For me he is the most fascinating person I ever met during my mathematical experience. And not only this. He taught me the most difficult thing: how to do research. It is nice here to remember that each every time I was getting depressed because we were not able to prove something then he began telling me one of his incredible jokes. Also if we found out that something we would have liked to be true, it was not, he was telling me “This is the truth, Claudia, what do you want more then the truth?”
