Francesco Brioschi, the engineer-publisher, dies at 86

The publisher Francesco Brioschi founder of a group formed by the homonymous publishing house Francesco Brioschi Editore and from the acronym of children’s books Valentina died suddenly in Milan at the age of 86. The announcement of his death, as reported by Adnkronos, was given by his publishing brands.

Brioschi was not born a publisher but became one in the midst of a life dedicated to research and teaching under the banner of an inexhaustible intellectual and scientific curiosity. Born in Milan in 1938graduated in electronic engineering from the Polytechnic of Milan in 1962, Research Fellow at Harvard University from 1967 to 1968, Brioschi became the holder of the first chair in Automatic Control in 1969, then dealing with the creation of study plans in Marketing and Business Management, which later became Management Engineering under his guidance. Full Professor of Operations Research from 1976 at the Polytechnic of Milan, he was a teacher at the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees in Paris in the three-year period 1989-1991. He has published in the fields of Applied Mathematics, Economics and Finance; he was a columnist on several occasions for ‘Il Sole 24 ore’, a member of the board of directors of two listed companies and president of Banknord Gepafi Sim (now Banor Sim) and was professor emeritus of Ownership Structures and Corporate Governance.

Publishing entered Francesco Brioschi’s life as a project and passion only in 2002, when he was well into his sixties, when he founded the acronym that bears his name to publish essays on current economic and financial affairs and texts on environmental emergencies. Faithful to his curiosity, he soon expanded the assortment of Francesco Brioschi Editore to fiction, inaugurating series dedicated to literatures that were still little practiced by the reading market in Italy. “Gli altri” was born with Iranian authors first, then Russian ones, and finally spread to all continents and genres, from Tunisia to sub-Saharan Africa to Ireland, from family sagas to thrillers, with authors such as Inaam Kachachi, Ali Bécheur, Narine Abgarjan e Abbas Maroufi. Not content, in even more recent years he began multiple forays into Italian narrative and created a series of reportages that immediately brought together authors and titles of primary interest, on the one hand publishing established or emerging names, from Giorgio van Straten to Margherita Nani, on the other exploring the best of new journalism with books by Ben Rawlence, Tom Burgis or Souad Mekhennet.

He also began opening bookstores under the Brioschi name: the first in Crema, immediately followed by another on the ground floor of the building that already houses the publishing house in Milan and, then again in Milan, in the Cascina Cuccagna. In the next few days, the fourth store was supposed to open, again in Milan, since Brioschi took over the historic Libreria della Natura in Corso di Porta Romana. The opening has been postponed.