Marcello Gigante was born in Buccino in 1923. He was a scholar of the Greek, classical philologist and one of the most important italian post-war papyrologists. He was a scholar of classical and Byzantine antiquities and he worked with different aspects of the greek literary and philosophical culture, focusing on the Epicurean texts, ancient southern italian literature and Byzantine texts. He worked on the publication of the Herculaneum papyrus withe the creation in 1969 of the “Centro Iternazionale per lo studio dei papiri ercolanesi” (C.I.S.P.E.) (International centre for the study of the papyruses of Herculaneum) and in 1971 of the Institution for the teaching of papyrology of Herculaneum at the Ateneo Federico II, where he taught until 1983. He died in Naples in 2001.
School of Papyrology of Herculaneum: Marcello Gigante was one of the most important post-war Italian papyrologists and, broadly speaking, a scholar of classical antiquity and the Byzantine. In Naples he unfolded his organizational skills in the creation of the campus in Naples, a scientific tradition devoted to the study of papyri from the city of Herculaneum. Stages of this action was the creation, in 1969, the International Centre for the Study of Herculaneum Papyri (CISPE) and, in 1971, the establishment of teaching Papyrology Herculaneum. Also he potentiated the Workshop of Herculaneum papyri housed in the National Library of Naples, Royal Palace, providing it with modern instrumentation for reading and preservation of carbonized papyri. Thanks to his work, we can have a digital archive of the entire library of Herculaneum, obtained by multispectral imaging techniques, consisting of over 35,000 digital photos.