Last Tuesday, November 15, Biancamaria Tedeschini Lalli, an Italian researcher known for being the first university female Dean in Italy, died at the age of 94. Tedeschini Lalli was born in Rome in 1928 and became an ordinary professor of Anglo-American literature at the Sapienza University in Rome in 1958. In the following years she also taught at several American universities, including Berkeley and Harvard. In 1992, she was chosen as rector of the University of Roma Tre, just established as a branch of Sapienza: she thus became the first woman to hold the highest position in an Italian university and paving the way for the path that today has led Antonella Polimeni to the rectorate of Sapienza. Tedeschini Lalli was rector in Roma Tre until 1998 and then of the Foro Italico University of Rome, a position she held until 2003. She received numerous awards and since June 2000 she had been awarded the title of Grand Officer of the Italian Republic by the President of the Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, precisely for having been the "first female rector of a university in Italy".