Prof. Edoardo Amaldi (5 September 1908 5 December 1989) was an Italian physicist. He graduated under the supervision of Enrico Fermi. After the second world war, Amaldi held the chair of 'General Physics' at the Sapienza University of Rome. He was the co-founder of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics, and of CERN and ESRO. He pioneered the European search for gravitational waves.