The Prince of Asturias Foundation
Pedro Miguel Etxenike Landiríbar
Born in Isaba (Navarre) in 1950, Pedro Miguel Etxenike Landiribar is Professor of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of the Basque Country.
After graduating in 1972, he carried out research for his doctorate at the prestigious University of Cambridge, where he earned his PhD in 1976 with a thesis on the interaction of energetic particles with the surface of solids. In 1977, he earned a PhD from the University of Barcelona for his work on swift ion-induced excitation in condensed matter. In 1998, Cambridge University awarded him the degree of Doctor of Science.
He undertook postdoctoral research at a number of international laboratories, such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory (USA), the Bohr Institute (Denmark) and Lund University (Sweden). He returned to the Basque Country in 1980 after a stint lecturing at the University of Barcelona. From 1980 to 1983, he served as Regional Minister of Education in the Basque Government and, from 1983 to 1984, as Regional Minister of Education and Culture, as well as being the spokesperson for the Government. During this time, he led to the creation of a system of science and technology in the Basque country and created a network of technology centres that have played a very important role in the technological development of the country in recent years. In 1984, Professor Etxenike left the Basque Government to focus his activities once more in the field of science, spending two years as a guest professor at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. He returned permanently to the Basque Country in 1986, where to become a Professor at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), a position he continues to hold in present day.
Professor Etxenike has undertaken research on explaining, by means of mathematical and computer methods, the behaviour of the particles that make up solid bodies and their interaction with external charged particle beams. His work has opened up and driven innovative lines of theoretical and experimental work in very diverse fields of condensed matter physics such as femtosecond chemistry, electron diffraction, electron localization on surfaces, inverse photoemission, scanning tunnelling microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, atomic collisions, ion-plasma interaction, ion implantation and surface excitation in superfluid helium. Another noteworthy aspect of Professor Etxenike’s professional activities is his interest (and ability) in disseminating scientific and technological activities and making them more approachable to society at large. He has been very active in this field in recent years, giving numerous lectures in different university, cultural and business forums, at which he has always defended the cultural value of scientific activity. Professor Etxenike was director of the CSIC-UPV/EHU Joint Centre for Materials Physics (1999-2001) and currently chairs the Donostia International Physics Center Foundation, together with which he is contributing to the growing internationalisation of the scientific activity of the Basque Country in general and of the area of the city of San Sebastian in particular. He has also chaired the Jakiunde, the Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters since 2007 and has been vice president of Innobasque since 2008.
A former overseas fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, he is an honorary member of the American Physical Society and member of the Spain-USA Council and the Trilateral Commission, as well as an Advisor to Bull Spain and Scientific Advisor to the BBVA Foundation. He has received several scientific awards, noteworthy among which are Munibe Science and Technology Prize, the DuPont Science Award, the Euskadi Research Prize and the Max Planck Research Award in Physics. In recent years, Professor Etxenike has received other distinctions of a general character such as the UPV/EHU Gold Medal and the Prince of Viana Prize for Culture. He is a “favourite son” of the town of Isaba and the 1999 “Universal Basque”.
Emilio Méndez Pérez
Holder of a PhD in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Emilio Méndez Pérez (Lleida, 1949) is Professor of Condensed Matter Physics at New York State University and director of the Interphase Phenomena Institute at the same university. He is the author of six patents on microelectronic devices. Professor Méndez, who has undertaken major research work at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Laboratory, has been a co-worker of the Nobel Prize winner for Physics Leo Esaki. He has been the director of the Center for Functional Nanomaterials at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York since 2006.
His research has focused on analysing the problems that arise in the fabrication and characterization of solid bodies used in high-tech processes. He has also studied the electronic and electro-optical properties of semiconductor materials, and his findings on the effects of an electric field on the electronic properties of quantum wells and super-networks, particularly the experimental demonstration of what is known as the Stark Effect on quantum wells, are particularly noteworthy.
Honorary member of the American Physical Society, Emilio Mendez is a member of the editorial board of the journals Solid State Communications and Semiconductor Science and Technology. He has also been the director of several NATO-sponsored courses on physics and semiconductor applications. He is likewise a recipient of the IBM Innovation Award and the Fujitsu Quantum Devices Award.
