, after defending a thesis entitled "Josephson Currents in Superconducting Junctions with a non-Conventional Insulator" [1]. With his pioneering work, Gaetano Giaquinta initiated the research on superconductivity at the University of Catania. 1 Since the early years of his career, the scientific and academic life of Gaetano Giaquinta was characterised by many recognitions both at the national and at the international level. From 1972 to 1991, he held numerous invited seminars and lectures in congresses, workshops, international schools, and prestigious universities and scientific institutions. Moreover, from 1969 to 2013, he authored several articles and monographs, published in scientific journals and book series. Having been educated as a theoretical physicist with a strong background in quantum mechanics and, in particular, in structure of matter and solid state physics, Gaetano Giaquinta's main scientific interests were electronic tunnelling and phonon spectroscopy, thermodynamic fluctuations of the order parameter in superconductors of type I, excitonic superconductivity in metal-dielectric coupled systems and in biological systems, Kosterlitz-Thouless-Berenzinskii transitions in two-dimensional superconductors, granular and mesoscopic superconductors, quantum size effect in degenerate semiconductors, high-temperature superconductivity, vortex-antivortex pair dissociation in two-dimensional superconductors and gauge theories. From 2002 to 2009, his research turned to continuum mechanics and biomechanics and, in particular, to problems involving growth, remodelling and transport phenomena in biological tissues. The last years of his scientific activity, from 2009 to 2012, were devoted to some fundamental aspects of analytical mechanics and electromagnetism. He served the scientific community as an organiser of symposia and conferences, as a reviewer for scientific journals and as a book editor. Our relationship with Prof. Giaquinta started with him as the physics professor whom everyone was talking about, and us as undergraduate students, and then evolved into a relationship of research collaboration and, naturally, as the very strong friendship between a professor and his last disciples.