The Prince of Asturias Foundation
Amable Liñán, born in Noceda (León) in 1934, holds a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Madrid. Considered a world authority in the field of combustion, he is also a very prominent figure in modern applied mathematics in Spain.
He began his teaching career in 1961 at the School of Aeronautical Engineering at the aforementioned university, where he was Professor of Fluid Mechanics and finally Professor Emeritus. He has also undertaken teaching assignments at the Universities of California, Michigan, Princeton, Stanford and Yale (USA), and at the University of Marseilles and the Pierre et Marie Curie University (France). His works on the application of mathematics to problems of combustion have gained worldwide recognition as being ground-breaking, to the point that he is regarded as the world’s top theorist in this field following the death of the Russian scientist Zel'dovich.
He has been a research engineer at the Spanish Institute of Aerospace Technology (Spanish acronym, INTA) and principal or associate investigator of numerous research contracts on basic problems of combustion (both in reactors and in the dynamics of planetary probes) for NASA and the European Space Agency, among other agencies. He was a representative of the European Space Agency on the Microgravity Combustion Group at NASA. He has written numerous books and scientific papers and has edited publications of great prestige, such as Combustion Science and Technology and the European Journal of Applied Mathematics.
Holder of honorary doctorates from the Universities of Zaragoza and Carlos III, he is a member of the Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences, the French Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering of Mexico and the Spanish Royal Academy of Engineering. He received the Zel'dovich Gold Medal of the International Combustion Institute (1994), the Research Team Award, awarded by the Polytechnic University Foundation (1986) and the Castile-León Prize of Technical and Scientific Research (1995).
