Asymptotic Freedom in Parton Language: the Birth of Perturbative QCD

I review the contributions of Giorgio Parisi to perturbative QCD. Concentrated in a decade, they mark the transition of the theory of strong interactions from a set of loosely connected ideas based on models, to a quantum field theory that is now an integral part of the standard model of fundamental interactions. Parisi's contributions have established at a very early stage ideas, methods and tools that are now standard, and in several cases anticipated results that only became prominent in the XXIst century.