He was born in Mexico City in 1947. He studied physics at the Facultad de Ciencias [Faculty of Sciences] of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) [National Autonomous University of Mexico]. He earned a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from the University of Oxford in England, and did postdoctoral work at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, University of California. He has been a professor at the University of Chile and the Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France. He is a past director of the Instituto de Física [Physics Institute] of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) [National Autonomous University of Mexico] where he currently serves as a researcher, in addition to being Investigador Nacional Nivel III [National Researcher Level III] of the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (SNI) [National Researcher System].
He began his career in experimental nuclear physics but his interest on instrumentation soon stood out, when he developed a new method to detect unstable nuclei with a very short half-life. He has made fundamental contributions to particle detection techniques, especially in the use of scintillating materials.
He collaborated in the design and construction of several international instruments, such as the Estación Espacial internacional [International Space Station], in CERN’s ALICE experiment, and he developed a cosmic ray detector installed under the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan, with the objective of showing any hidden voids in the pyramid’s structure that may be worthy of archaeological study.
He was founding president of the Nuclear Physics division of the Sociedad Mexicana de Física [Mexican Physics Society] and coordinator of the Sección de Física de la Academia Mexicana de Ciencias [Physics section of the Mexican Academy of Sciences]. Since 2003, he is a member of the Comisiones Evaluadoras [Evaluation Commissions] of the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (SNI) [National Researcher System]. He is a member of the Consejo Consultivo de Ciencias de la Presidencia de la República (CCC) [Science Consulting Council of the President’s Office].
He has received the Premio a la Investigación Científica de la Sociedad Mexicana de Física [Scientific Research Prize of the Mexican Physics Society]; the Medalla Fernando Alba [Fernando Alba Medal] for his contributions to the development of experimental physics in Mexico; and the Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes [National Award for Science and Arts].
He is author or co-author of 133 publications, including 84 papers in journals with arbitration, 26 articles in extenso, congress proceedings, and 17 articles and 5 books disseminating scientific knowledge. To date, these papers have been cited 924 times. He has tutored 15 B.S. degree and 2 master's theses, and 3 doctoral dissertations.
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