Giuseppe Di Giugno (born in Benghazi in 1937) is an Italian physicist.
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He graduated with a degree in physics from Rome University in 1961.
From 1961 until 1975, he was a researcher in the field of matter-antimatter interactions at the National Laboratory of Nuclear Physics at Frascati and at the CERN (European Centre for Nuclear Research) at Geneva. In particular, he was actively involved in the design and realization of ADA, the first electron-positron storage ring.
He also served as an associate professor first of "Physics Laboratory II" and then of "Structure of Matter" at the Physics Institute of Naples University from 1963 until 1975.
Between 1970 and 1973, Giuseppe di Giugno progressively abandoned research on particle physics and turned his attention principally to Electroacoustics and Digital Sound, setting up a Research center at the the Naples University Physics Institute (which is still active). There, he developed numerous analog and digital systems controlled by a PDP11 computer for the generation and processing of sound in real time. In 1974, he met Luciano Berio, who invited him to IRCAM in Paris for the realization of an Electroacoustic Centre; this marked the beginning of a collaboration with Berio, which continued until 2000. At IRCAM, guided by the musical ideas of Pierre Boulez, he developed several prototypes of digital machines which, in 1979, were consolidated in the "4X" system. This was the first real entirely digital music work station and it opened new horizons for the composition and performance of music. This system was used by Boulez, Nono and Stockhausen. It has been, to a certain extent, a reference point for all the various digital instruments subsequently realized.
In 1988, Di Giugno returned to Italy to assume the direction of the IRIS research laboratory of the Bontempi-Farfisa group where, through 1999, he continued his research activities in the field of large musical work stations, coordinating a Design Centre for the realization of specialized microprocessors handling digital sound signals.
The "MARS" work station and the "SMART" spatializer were realized during that period. Both systems were widely used, but have now become obsolete with the advent on the market of high-speed Personal Computers, which allows real time emulation of the old hardware system.[1]