The Prince of Asturias Foundation
Federico García Moliner was born in Burriana (Castellón) in 1930 and completed his secondary education at the Instituto Francisco Ribalta in his hometown. He graduated in Physical Sciences from the Complutense University of Madrid and holds PhDs in Physics from both the University of Cambridge and the Complutense University of Madrid. He began his professional career at the Spanish National Research Council (Spanish acronym, CSIC) and soon moved to the University of Illinois (USA), where he lectured for three years. Upon his return to CSIC, he continued his work in solid state physics, a field in which he played a major role developing a Spanish school of research which was soon to achieve international standing. In addition to his research work, he was also a prolific in organisational and educational terms. He was the driving force behind the creation of the Institute of Solid State Physics, he participated for several years in the initial undertakings of the Scientific and Technical Research Advisory Committee Think Tank and contributed to the setting up of the Autonomous University of Madrid, where he consolidated the aforementioned research school. On his return to Spain, he became intensely active on an international scale. He played a major role as a guest lecturer in graduate school programmes (especially in Italy and Scandinavia), which provided the training for generations of young European scientists who were to form the basis for the subsequent scientific development in Europe. Founder member of the United Nations Committee on Condensed Matter Physics at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste (Italy), he has worked intensively in aiding budding institutions and scientists in emerging countries, especially in Latin America. He has served on several editorial boards of international scientific journals, often as a referee for several of them; he has given lectures and courses at numerous academic and scientific centres in various countries worldwide, as well as at different types of international scientific meetings and conferences; and he has been sat on numerous international committees. He has worked in diverse fields of the physics of solids, which studies the properties of solid matter from the viewpoint of their atoms. This constitutes a fundamental science to develop a theory of solid materials with many important applications. Professor García Moliner is considered a world authority in this branch of science and has numerous publications in international scientific journals, including research articles and guest contributions (book chapters, educational papers, scientific papers and review articles), as well as being the author of books that are widely used by researchers from different countries.
He is a founder member of the Board of the Cambridge European Trust and was vice president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (1991-1999). Noteworthy among his awards and distinctions are the González Martí Prize for best Physics student at the Complutense University of Madrid, National Science Award runner-up, Special PhD Award from the Complutense University of Madrid, the Diploma of Honour for Distinguished Service from San Antonio Abad University, Cuzco (Peru) and Distinguished Guest of the City of Santiago (Cuba) and Member Emeritus of the Spanish Vacuum Association. He holds medals from the Royal Spanish Society of Physics, the University of Oriente–Santiago de Cuba and the University of Havana, Cuba. He was awarded honorary doctorates by the Universities of Havana and Lille I. France and is an Honorary Fellow of Fitzwilliam College at the University of Cambridge.
