"......However, while I was working in Pisa, I was not exempt from that dissatisfaction and restlessness which is (and should be) part of the youth of each of us. In fact, a certain degree of restlessness and dissatisfaction not only should be permitted, but it should be also cultivated during one's life, to avoid the stagnation born by the complacency for what we consider our successes. It is necessary that our mind be always intent toward the future, otherwise we end up having only a past. Of course, I am not speaking about the restlessness that is born out of boredom or uncertainty, but of that born out of the realization that not to advance is already to regress.

At that time, the immediate cause of my dissatisfaction was the fact that I realized that it was necessary that I should receive a more advanced education in the field that I had selected, if I wanted to do more and, most of all, to do something better. For me, it was not only a question of acquiring notions at a higher level, since I could have done that by reading more or attending more lectures or seminars. The question was to acquire the methods, theoretical bases, technical skill, practical experience and, most of all, the mentality necessary to pursue that which interested me. Because there is a great difference between reading and doing, the same difference that there is between a spectator and an actor. I had learned very much from my first teachers and I have toward them a great debt of gratitude. But now it was a question of being exposed to different educational systems to obtain a different perspective and augment my experience.

In the beginning, I was interested mainly in learning more in the clinical field. I found the practice of medicine extremely interesting, not so much for the challenge involved in making a correct diagnosis, as for the contact with humanity and its physical but, above all, psychological and emotional problems. The contact with the mind of the patient was like penetrating into a sacred enclosure, strictly reserved to the most intimate thoughts and emotions. An enclosure forbidden to everyone else and that the necessity of communicating one's anxieties and tensions and the hope of relief opened widely to the doctor. In Pisa, among other things, I was a cardiology consultant for the prisons: it was extraordinary to see how the deprivation of freedom had so devastating effects on the human soul. If outside I was in contact with problems, inside there I was in contact with dramas.

But, if medicine impassioned me, the necessity to grow professionally was pushing me to seek the conditions suitable to that purpose. This desire for professional development was the reason for my going to the United States, initially to the French Hospital in New York City as a Resident in Medicine. It was a remarkable experience, since after a couple of weeks that I was there as an Assistant Resident, I was appointed Acting Chief Resident. Thus, I was entrusted with the responsibility of the Department of Medicine under the supervision of the Attending Physicians. Fewer things help in recruiting one's energies and maturing professionally than to be assigned personal responsibilities.

I remember this experience with pleasure and as a source of professional satisfactions, but my natural tendencies soon (after one year) pushed me in the field of the exclusive physiological research. And, since I was a cardiologist, in the field of cardiac physiology. By now, whether at a clinical or an experimental level, I had chosen to devote myself to the problems of the heart.

Although I found the clinical practice so interesting, research had for me a far more profound relevance. It was no longer a question of the necessary subtlety in making a diagnosis in that hunt for revealing signs that is the examination of a patient. It was a question of searching for truth. The truth that, in contrast to so many other human things, is immutable and eternal. It was a question of exploring the extraordinary organization of the body. In a sense, it was no longer a matter of entering into the secret recesses of the human soul, but into those yet more complex of the creation of God.

I had the good luck of being trained in the laboratories of outstanding physiologists in the United States (first in Georgia and then in New York) and also in Europe (in Bern) where I returned for two years as requested by the American law to obtain the immigrant visa. As in any other human activity, research demands training, method and discipline and these are best learned from those who have a direct experience of what they teach. In other words, the trainee needs the equivalent of the ancient "bottega" where one learns the art and the secrets of the trade from those who know it because they practice it every day. Only then the other qualities that every researcher needs to have (such as tenacity, curiosity, physical resistance, dedication without compromises, a sharp mind and the ability of knowing how to look and of seizing opportunities) can produce positive results.

But why select the heart as the object of my professional interest? Since always the heart has excited a remarkable interest and the main reason is that we feel that the heart participates so strongly and intimately in our affective life. Who, shaken by profound emotions, has not felt his heart beat violently in the chest, participating strongly to his emotional state? Even more, who does not identify the heart with his passions, his fears or his hopes? Are we not convinced that we dream with the heart, we love with the heart, we fight with the heart? Do we not feel that sometimes it would be petty to allow the mind to harness the impulses of the heart in the name of the just measure? What just measure? Perhaps that dictated by whatever is mediocre in us? Is it not the heart considered the site of many of our feelings if we speak of a sensitive or generous or courageous heart?

Nay, the heart is intimately connected with the very concept of life and we know that a wound of the heart, if physical, is often rapidly fatal; if sentimental, it can take away most of the meaning of our life, creating a desert of sadness at whose horizon we can not see any hope. We all know the consequences of the cessation of the heart beats. And the very warmth of the blood that circulates within it is taken as a symbol of life, as a vital juice that nourishes not only our body, but also our feelings and thoughts. Who would ever dream of considering the heart on the same plane as the liver, the intestine, the pancreas or the lungs? Yet, these organs are no less indispensable for a physical survival. Therefore, it is clear that the heart plays a fundamental role in the physiology of the body and participates intimately to the life of the mind and to its emotions.

After one year, his interest in research drove him to devote himself full time to the experimental study of the function of the heart. His clinical experience has substantially influenced his research activity in the field of spontaneous activity of the heart under normal and abnormal conditions.

In 1959, Dr. Vassalle was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Cardiovascular Research and Training Program in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, Georgia, under the direction of Professors William F. Hamilton and Raymond P. Ahlquist, scientists well known in the physiology and pharmacology of the cardiovascular system. In 1960, Dr. Vassalle was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Physiology, State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center a Brooklyn, New York, under the direction of Prof. Brian F. Hoffman, who is one of the top scientists in the field of cardiac electrophysiology.

In 1962-1964, with the help of a grant of N.I.H., Dr. Vassalle worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Physiologisches Institut, Universität Bern, Berna, Switzerland, under the guidance of Prof. Silvio Weidmann, the initiator of cardiac electrophysiology. In Bern, Dr. Vassalle was the second to apply the method of voltage clamping to a cardiac tissue and the first to demonstrate the ionic mechanism responsible for the diastolic depolarization (pacemaker potential) in Purkinje fibers.

In 1964, Dr. Vassalle went back to the Department of Physiology, Downstate Medical Center, in New York, where he has remained since, continuing his work in the field of cardiac electrophysiology. Here, he and his co-workers have used a variety of preparations and methods to study different problems. At the State University of New York, Dr. Vassalle progressed from Visiting Assistant Professor (1964) to Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Full Professor(1971). Since July 2006, he is Professor Emeritus of Physiology and Pharmacology. He has been Visiting Professor at numerous national and international Universities.

Up to the present time, Prof. Vassalle has edited 4 books, published 55 reviews, 173 original papers e 163 abstracts. During his career, he received the financial support for his research activity from N.I.H. and the American Heart Association. Among the honors that Prof . Vassalle has received is a Laurea ad Honorem on the occasion of the 600^th Anniversary of the foundation of the University of Ferrara.

He is a member of several scientific societies and has been invited to speak at numerous national and international meetings (United States, Canada, Holland, France, Argentina, Italy, Taiwan, Switzerland, Mexico, Japan and China). He have been an Associate Editor of the American Journal of Physiology, Heart and Circulatory Physiology, member of the Editorial Board and editorial consultant of several journals of different countries. He has been a consultant for N.I.H site visits, member ad hoc for per "study sections" and regular member of the Cardiopulmonary Study Section of N.I.H. Young researchers have come to his laboratory for training from the United States, Italy, Chile, Argentina, Japan, Taiwan, China, Mexico, etc. In addition, Prof. Vassalle has trained in his laboratory several graduate students in the theory of and experimentation in cardiac physiology toward the Ph.D. degree.