It is with great sadness that Flinders University reflects on the recent passing of trailblazing neuroscience academic Professor Marcello Costa. His colleagues Simon Brookes, Nick Spencer and David Wattchow put together the following tribute.
Marcello joined Flinders University in 1975 as a lecturer in physiology. Generations of medical and biomedical science students fondly recall his eloquent, authoritative lectures delivered with his distinctive slight Italian accent. His phenomenally successful research focussed on a “simple” system of nerves in the gastrointestinal tract, but he identified principles of organisation that apply to the whole nervous system.
He became a towering figure in autonomic neuroscience worldwide, elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (1988), President of the Australian Neuroscience Society (1994-5), recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the international Federation of Neurogastroenterology (2018) and Order of Australia in 2020. Marcello read voraciously and had a powerful intellect. He was a passionate humanist, fiercely committed to academic freedom, honesty and public education. He lived life to the full; he was an accomplished guitarist, an explorer of remote Patagonia, a mountaineer and a formidable windsurfer. He supported his colleagues, junior and senior very generously. And, of course, he was a devoted husband, father and grandfather. He will be deeply missed.
Professor Marcello Costa was born in Torino (Turin, Italy) in 1940, where obtained in 1967 his Medical Degree (Laurea in Medicina e Chirurgia). He migrated to Australia in 1970 and was one of the founders of the new discipline of Neuroscience and the Australian Neuroscience Society (ANS), of which become President in the 1990s.
He held a personal chair in Neurophysiology at Flinders University, the first in Australia, was foundation co-chair of the the South Australian Neuroscience Institute (SANI) from 2003 to 2010, and he published more than 230 scientific papers in international journals, 55 reviews and chapters and written two books in enteric neuroscience and gastrointestinal motor functions.