Maurizio Montalbini dies at 56; Italian sociologist lived in caves to study isolation

Italian sociologist Maurizio Montalbini, who spent months dwelling in caves to study how the mind and body cope with complete isolation, has died. He was 56.

Montalbini died of a heart attack Saturday in a mountain hamlet near the central Italian town of Macerata, said Guido Galvagno, a longtime colleague.

Galvagno said the death did not appear connected to Montalbini’s record-breaking cave stays.

Montalbini spent a total of two years and eight months underground since he started his experiments in the 1980s, according to a biography on his website.

In 1987, he claimed his first world record after spending 210 days alone in a cave in the Apennine Mountains. A year later, he led an international team of 14 spelunkers, including three women, to take the world group record with an underground stay of 48 days.

During his endurance experiments, Montalbini subsisted mostly on a high-calorie diet of powdered foods and pills similar to those used by astronauts on space flights. Scientists on the outside monitored him via instruments.

Montalbini’s biography says his team’s experiments were done in collaboration with NASA and top universities worldwide. They yielded insights into the effects of long-term isolation including weight loss, changes in the perception of time and in the sleep and menstrual cycles.

For the sociologist, who worked with drug addicts before turning to spelunking, the experiments were also a personal challenge of willpower and endurance.

“One cannot fight solitude, one must make a friend of it,” he said after his 1987 exploit. “I succeeded in doing this. I carried everything inside me for seven months -- affections, convictions, ideals.”

Montalbini broke his solo cave-sitting record in 1993 by living a year and one day in an underground base built to study the reactions of individuals and crews on simulated space missions.

In his last experiment, which ran through 2006 and 2007, Montalbini spent 235 days in Grotta Fredda (Cold Cave), the base built in the Apennines.

Montalbini, who had no children, is survived by his wife, Galvagno said.

news.obits@latimes.com