Mario Eduardo Guido Báncora was born in the Argentine city of Rosario on 24 September 1918.
He began his studies at the Colegio Nacional Nº1 in Rosario, obtaining the highest grades in his class. He later studied Civil Engineering at the Universidad del Litoral, after which he obtained a scholarship from the International Institute of Education to specialize in Atomic Physics in the United States.
Báncora continued in the United States thanks to the intervention of the American scientist Ernest Lawrence, joining the University of California as a member of the Berkeley Radation Laboratory to work as a war researcher.
His experimental physics research included the automatic parachute opening device for which the US Air Force applied for a patent.
He received a "Technical and Specialized Personnel Grant" from the US State Department to visit the physics laboratories of the most important American universities.
When his research was completed, he received a large number of offers to work in the United States, but his wish was to return to Argentina, but not before having the opportunity to meet two Nobel Prize winners, Glenn T. Seaborg, and Albert Einstein.
In 1946, Báncora joined the Faculty of Engineering of the National University of Rosario as a professor of Physics. Moreover, after his return to Rosario, he embarked on a project that many considered excessively ambitious: the construction of the first South American cyclotron. Thus, the magazine of the Universidad Nacional del Litoral Nº1 published the news of the construction of a 35cm polar diameter cyclotron.
He also organized the Department of Atomic Physics of the University. He was later appointed Director of the National Atomic Energy Commission (from 1960 to 1969) and, in 1961, the Argentinean Nobel Prize winner Bernardo Houssay invited him to join the Conicet (Argentinean National Council for Scientific and Technical Research).
In 1963 he was appointed member of the Special Commission of the Alliance for Progress to promote the development of science, education, and culture. Four years later he was summoned as a visiting professor in the Republic of Guatemala to plan its global program in Nuclear Energy.
His profound knowledge as a teacher and scientific researcher in the field of Physics led him to hold positions such as ad-honorem Researcher at the Institute of Physiography of the UNL, Head of Research at the Institute of Stability of the UNL, Researcher at the YPF Research Laboratory in Florencio Varela, Technical Manager of X-rays at the Institute of Physics of the UNLP, Member of the Committee of Experts in Physics of the National Directorate of Scientific and Technical Research, Director of the School of Physics of the Faculty, Director of Research and Laboratories of the National Institute of Industrial Technology, President of the Nuclear Power Plants Committee of the National Atomic Energy Commission, Director of the Technological Research Centre of the province of Santa Fe and member of the group of experts for the programming of regional nuclear energy centers in Latin America, among others.
Báncora died in Rosario on 30 July 2006, suffering from Parkinson's disease.
