October 7, 1934 - Birth of Manuel Cardona Castro, world specialist in Solid State Physics

The Spanish physicist Manuel Cardona Castro was born in Barcelona on 7 September 1934.

He graduated in physical sciences from the University of Barcelona in 1955, receiving the national prize for the best academic record of all the science faculties in Spain. In 1956 he was awarded the Smith-Mundt scholarship which allowed him to work as a graduate student at Harvard University under the direction of Professor William Paul. There he began to develop his thesis "The quadratic photomagneto-electric effect in germanium and silicon", subsequently obtaining his doctorate from the University of Madrid in 1958.

A year later he received his PhD in Applied Physics from Harvard University. During his stay at Harvard University, Cardona Castro won two other important scholarships: the Juan March scholarship and the one awarded by Bell Labs.

At the end of 1959, he returned to Europe and began working at RCA Laboratories in Zurich, Switzerland. However, in 1961 he returned to the United States when he was transferred to RCA Laboratories in Princeton.

From 1964 to 1971 he taught at Brown University. He was first an associate professor of physics, becoming a full professor in only two years. He also taught at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Buenos Aires.

In 1971, he was appointed director of the newly established Max Planck Institute for Solid State Physics Research in Stuttgart, Germany. He remained in this position until his death on 2 July 2014.

He was also a member of the Review Board for Condensed Matter Physics of the German National Science Foundation, the Council of the German Physical Society, the Scientific Council of DESY (Hamburg), the US Academy of Sciences, and the Barcelona Academy of Sciences, among other institutions.

Manuel Cardona Castro has furthered his research into the knowledge of superconductors and the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with semiconductor materials, and these studies have great potential for industrial and technological applications.

His more than 1,200 articles, as well as his scientific monographs, stand out. He is one of the eight most cited physicists in the international scientific literature since 1970.