FERDINANDO TARGETTI - IN MEMORIAM SCHOLAR, FRIEND, COLLEAGUE AND A GENTLEMAN

In all of my 64 years of living I have rarely been able to say, of any of the hundreds of friends and acquaintances that have entered, and left, my personal or professional life, that any one of them left only happy memories of our encounters. Of Ferdinando Targetti I have only very happy memories - of a perennially smiling face, of an animated soul, of an engaging and engaged intellectual, of a personal friend of immense loyalty and of a generous and kind human being. Not very strangely, I have a picture-perfect memory of the first time we met, 38 years ago, between the narrow space of the bookshelves that lined the copiously endowed University Library at Cambridge University. The ever smiling face, the impeccably dressed Gentleman, the warm and firm handshake, and a friendship was born, even as my instincts confirmed that it would last - but not that it would end as abruptly as it did, with the intervention of the termination of a tenancy on time. This paper is a personal, very private, tribute - albeit hopelessly inadequate - by one very ordinary academic economist, to another remarkable one. It is in the nature of our intrinsic measure as professionals that my tribute to Targetti should fall far short of what he deserves. But this is almost the best I can manage, at this point in time. I dedicate this paper to lovely 'Bogna', a widow before her time, a formidable personality who combined an enchanting beauty with deep intellectual interests, pursued with unusual - but, perhaps, not so for a Pole - passion.Only she will understand, and so it should be, the subtexts to my dedication to her. In sadness - but with memories to sustain it, Vela Velupillai