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Morán-López, J.L.

Dr. José Luis Morán-López (52 years old), BS Physics, Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, México, 1972, MS Physics, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados, IPN, México, D.F., 1974, PhD Theoretical Physics, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, 1977) is the Director of the Instituto Potosino de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica A.C., San Luis Potosí, S.L.P, México.

Dr. Morán-López is the author and co-author of 185 technical publications on alloy theory (phase diagrams, interplay of magnetism and chemical order, Heusler alloys), physical properties of transition metals, surface physics (segregation, order-disorder phase transitions, chemisorption). During the past few years, he has been involved in the electronic structure and vibrational properties of Fullerenes. More recently, he has been interested in the influence of confinement and low dimensionality on alloy phase diagrams.

Dr. Morán-López has received the following honors and awards. National Award on Exact Sciences given by the Mexican Academy of Sciences, 1985. Recipient of the Award Manuel Noriega Morales, in Exact Sciences given by Organization of American States, 1988. Recipient of the Award C.V. Raman, given by the International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy, 1990. Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences, Trieste, Italy, 1991. Fellow of the American Physical Society, November 1993. President of the Mexican Physical Society, 1994–1996. President of the Latin-American Federation of Physical Societies, 1995–1998. Member of the Physics Award of the Third World Academy of Sciences, 1995–1998. Recipient of the National Award on Science and Arts given by the President of the Republic, 1996. Vice-President of the IUPAP, 1999–2002.

 

SCIENCE FOR EVERYBODY: A SUCCESSFUL PROGRAM FOR THE POPULARIZATION OF SCIENCE IN LATIN AMERICA

A Mexican Editorial House, El Fondo de Cultura Económica, has launched a program for the generation of a series of books written by active scientists to motivate high school and junior college students. The program started in 1986 and comprises now 186 titles covering all scientific disciplines. These books are written in a very descriptive way displaying many pictures and few or non-formulae. The costs are reasonable and many copies have been sold. The volume “The Expanding Universe” holds the record with more than 90,000 copies sold.

The series started with contributions of Mexican authors but now also Argentinean, Brazilian, Cuban and Spanish authors have contributed interesting books. To promote reading of these books, every two years an international contest to evaluate the series is organized. The number of young students and science teachers participating in the contest is constantly increasing. In my presentation I will show details of the science popularization program.