Didactic and Academic activity
Giuseppe Galletta, born the 3rd of January 1954, doctor in Astronomy at Padua University (1975), Teacher of Exercises of Structure of the Matter (1976-78), Granted researcher of CNR (1977-79), Astronomer at the Padova Observatory (1979-86), Professor at Padua University since 1986. Retired from October 2020.

He was teacher of several courses in a number of degree and diplomas. At present is teaching in the courses of : Elements of Astronomy and Complements of Astronoy (Sc. and Tecn. for the Nature), Astrobiology (Spec. degree Nat. Sciences and Astronomy).

He was supervisor of dozen of theses for students of Astronomy, Natural Sciences and didactic diplomas.

Main memberships: Italian Physical Society, International Astronomical Union , Founding Member of the European Astronomical Society, European Exo-AstroBiology Network Association (EANA)

Since 1980 he was coordinator or responsible of more than twenty commissions at the padua Observatory, Padua University and Roma CNR. At present is President of Tutors College of Science and Technologies for the Nature, Responsible of European Social Funds project for the Astronomy Department, Responsible for the analisyss of quality of didactic for the Science Faculty, Responsible of Funds for Scientific Research.

Scientific results
In 1978, with F. Bertola has discovered a type of galaxies whose structure is elongated, directly proving the existence of triaxial structures, already suggested by J. Binney. They used the symmetry of gaseous rings as tracers of the stellar potential, revealing his shape, i.e., whether it is generally oblate, prolate or triaxial. In addition, they indicates a few disc galaxies, such as NGC 2685, possibly related with triaxial ellitpticals. These galaxies were later discovered to be another class of peculiar objects, the polar ring galaxies.

In 1980 Galletta has demonstrated that the change of orientation of the isophote major axis in a galaxy correlates with apparent ellipticity. This relation has been confirmed by various authors.On the basis of this work, with L. Benacchio and A. Hayli of Lion (France), he has created the first theoretical models to study the intrinsic shape of the galaxies, demonstrating on statistical bases of mildly triaxial structures.

In 1986, Galletta discovered the first S0 galaxy in which the gas disk rotates in the opposite direction with respect to the gas (counterrotation) and in 1995 with D. Bettoni and R. Ciri the first Spiral with counterrotation. This physical phenomenon should not to be possible because of the dynamical “two stream instability”. His existence represented the evident proof that galaxy evolution continue after their formation with nested events of matter accretion from outside.

The results of these works induced him to investigate on the processes of gas and stars acquisition from the environment, with radio and millimetric observations. Since 2006 is working on the structure and the evolution of galaxies collaborating with Italian and foreign astronomers, using data from the UV satellite GALEX

Notices