Mario Primicerio


Mario Primicerio is an Italian politician, former Mayor of Florence.

Career

Graduated in physics in 1962, from 1970 he started teaching at the University of Florence, after working as a researcher at the ionized gas laboratory of Frascati.
During these years he becomes a close collaborator of former Mayor of Florence Giorgio La Pira.
In 1995 he ran for the office of Mayor of Florence: for the first time a center-left coalition, composed by the former communist Democratic Party of the Left and some other progressives party, such as the new-born Federation of the Greens and the Communist Refoundation Party, presented its candidate. The main opposition to Primicerio's coalition was represented by Giorgio Morales, the outgoing mayor, former member of the Italian Socialist Party and now a supporter of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party.
Primicerio easily won the election on the first round and became the first elected Mayor of Florence and remained in office until 1999, when he decided to retire from politics.
He has then been visitor professor in several universities, like those of Austin, Beijing, Helsinki, Minneapolis, Novosibirsk, Oxford, Paris, São Carlos, Rosario and Tel Aviv.