Paolo Budinich, instrumental in the creation of the ICTP and for many years its deputy director, tells his story in an autobiography titled L'arcipelago delle meraviglie (The Archipelago of Wonders), published by Di Renzo Editore in Rome. Apart from his personal remembrances (Budinich was born in 1916 in Dalmatia, then part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire), the book recounts the battle for establishing the ICTP in Trieste and the early days of the Centre. In the concluding pages, Budinich writes about the reconciliation between science and philosophy and the capacity of mathematics to anticipate unknown physical realities (from antimatter to string theory).