Abstract

The pulmonary pathology community around the world mourns the passing of Dr. Giulio Rossi who died of a glioblastoma multiforme on November 27, 2023, three months after diagnosis. Giulio was a warm and compassionate man to those who knew him. He was a dedicated family man and he will be forever missed by his wife, Lucia Longo, and his daughters Chiara and Maddalena. To know Giulio was to know a wonderful human being, always ready with a smile and a kind word.

Giulio was born January 20, 1968 in Modena and grew up in Rolo, a small village in the country north of Reggio Emilia, where his father had a shoe store. He has a brother, and during the summer to help his family he worked as a seasonal farmer collecting fruit. With a friend he did a canoe trip from Rolo to Mantua along three rivers (Secchia, Po and Mincio), quite an adventure for a boy. 

He married Lucia (an oncologist) in 1999 and Chiara was born in 2005 and Maddalena in 2008. He loved jazz, crime novels (preferred author Henning Mankel) and art (from Caravaggio to Keith Haring). Right after their marriage he and Lucia did a trip in the center of Italy to follow in the footsteps of Piero della Francesca. 

Giulio did his military service in Florence and all his studies in Modena: classic lyceum, MD degree, PhD and residency in pathology. He spent a period of six months in Grenoble with Prof. Brambilla, and made two visits to Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale, AZ. His first permanent position in pathology was at Modena University; he then moved to Reggio Emilia Hospital followed by a return to Modena. Then from 2016-2017 he was director of the Pathology Unit in Aosta Hospital, and from 2017-2021 the director of the Pathology Unit in AUSL Romagna. His final position was as director of the Pathology Unit in the Hospital Institute Fondazione Poliambulanza in Brescia (2021 to death). He left a huge professional and human inheritance in each place he worked.

After his retirement, he dreamed of moving to South America to help poor people: “with a small amount of money you can do a lot there”, he said. In the three months between his diagnosis and his passing he continued to work and help colleagues from home until the last few days of life. During this period he showed strength, courage, clarity and a determined positivity that were an example to, and a comfort for, his family and friends. His ashes are buried in the small and quite cemetery of Freto, a village in the country near Modena. 

Among Giulio’s qualities/characteristics are the following: concrete pragmatism coupled with a great vision/interest for new and different things, a capacity to materialize dreams and when these were realized to replace them with new dreams to realize, clever flexibility in adapting his ideas to the achievable possibilities at the institutions he worked at, and finally to directly and indirectly help countless colleagues and patients with his capacity to efficiently (“less is better” was one of his preferred mottos) combine traditional morphology, clinical data and newer diagnostic techniques for optimal outcomes. 

Giulio served as co-author of the last 4 editions of the WHO classification of the pleuro-pulmonary tumors and from 2015 to 2023 was member of the national Italian panel of experts for the guidelines of lung and mesothelioma diagnosis and treatment. He was author/co-author of more than 400 peer-reviewed articles and had a busy consultation practice, particularly for lung and pleural pathology.

Giulio was one of a group of exceptional Italian pathologists who visited Mayo Clinic in Arizona to study and collaborate on lung pathology. This collaboration resulted in many close personal friendships as well as a large number of scholarly publications and presentations in Europe and North America.

Giulio was also one of the founding members of a closeknit group of Italian pathologists interested in lung pathology. This collegial collaboration resulted in literally hundreds of publications covering the gamut of traditional histopathology as well as newer molecular techniques as they have come along, along with many practical review articles useful to the general pathologist. Giulio’s record and consistency of publication is truly remarkable.

We have all been honored to be able to watch Giulio grow into his profession from an eager young pathologist to an internationally respected expert who had leadership roles in a number of institutions, most recently at the Fondazione Poliambulanza Istituto Ospedaliero in Brescia.

A lesser known fact about Giulio is that he was a sports fanatic: football of course but also sports in the USA. For some reason he chose teams from the state of Pennsylvania including the Pittsburgh Steelers (American) football team and the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team to be “his” teams, but Larry Bird of the Boston Celtics was his idol. It was not unusual for him to be awake late at night watching NBA games being played in the US. 

Giulio was a charismatic leader and an educator for his many colleagues, particularly those early in their career. He was humble, honest and generous, and cared deeply for colleagues. He will be mourned and sadly missed by all who knew him.