Esteban Terradas i Illa
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Esteban Terradas i Illa, on a studio selfportrait. |
Esteban Terradas i Illa (born
Barcelona,
15 September 1883; died
Madrid,
9 May 1950) was a
Catalan mathematician,
scientist and
engineer. He researched and taught widely in the fields of
mathematics and the
physical sciences, working not only in his native
Catalonia, but also in the rest of
Spain and in
South America. He was also active as a consultant in the Catalan and Spanish
telephone and
railway industries.
He held two
doctorates (in mathematics and
physics) on
1904, as well as two degrees in
engineering. He was
professor of
mathematical analysis (teaching
differential equations) and later of
mathematical physics at
Barcelona Central University. He also taught
acoustics,
optics,
electricity,
magnetism and
classical mechanics at the
University of Barcelona, teaching mechanics also at the
University of Zaragoza,
University of Buenos Aires and the
universities of
La Plata (
Argentina) and
Montevideo (
Uruguay). He was a Member of the
Royal Academy of the Spanish Language and active in the
Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences and the
Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona. He was granted
honorary doctorates by the Universities of Buenos Aires, of
Santiago de Chile and of
Toulouse (
France) and established as an honorary member of the
Royal Academy of Medicine of Barcelona, the Association of Argentine Engineers, and of the Society of Engineers of
Peru among many other honours.
He studied at
Charlottenburg in
Berlin, Barcelona and Madrid. Known as an exceptional student, entered the University on
1898, when was only 15 years old. He held professorships in the universities of Zaragoza, Barcelona and Madrid, specializing in physical and mathematical sciences and publishing numerous articles about those subjects. In
1909, while at the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona, he produced an important work entitled
Emisión de radiaciones por cuerpos fijos o en movimiento.
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Poster at the exhibition entry in homage to Terradas at the Escola d'Enginieria i Arquitectura de la Salle (Barcelona) in year 2004. |
His
teaching and pedagogical activity was also important. He published articles in the "Revista de la Academia de Ciencias" in Madrid, and in the bulletin of the
Institute of Sciences of Barcelona. He set up a physics-mathematics
seminar, to which he brought some of the best regarded scientists of his time. He became a founder member of the Sciences Section of the
Institute of Catalan Studies in
1911, within the framework of the
Monographic Courses of High Studies of Exchange promoted by the
Mancomunitat de Catalunya. He also participated in the
Minerva Collection, where he published "The
radium". In
1919 set up the
Institute of Electricity and Applied Mechanics and was its director; he was also a teacher of the section of
electrotechnics of the
Escola del Treball.
He was interested about
photography, starting at the time, on the beginning of the
20th century, using it to illustrate his technical and scientific works as well as his personal life.
He was fascinated by the theories of
quanta and
relativity, inviting such figures as
Jacques Hadamard) (
1921),
Hermann Weyl (
1921),
Arnold Sommerfeld (
1922),
Tullio Levi-Civita (
1922) and
Albert Einstein (
1923) to Barcelona. Einstein's Spanish visit, between
22 and
28 February 1923, was a notable success, organised by Terradas, the Catalan Government, the
Mancomunitat, and
Rafael Campalans. Terradas also was the driving force behind a series of scientific
monographies that were a compilation of these lectures, his own and the works of others (including
Julio Palacios,
Julio Rey Pastor and
Jacques Hadamard), printed by the Institute of Catalan Studies under the title "Courses of Physics and Mathematics".
On
1918, Terradas was chosen to drive the
Xarxa de Ferrocarrils Secundaris de Catalunya (Secondary Net of Catalan Railways), intended to decentralize Catalonia, but was never completed due to the
dictatorship of
Primo de Rivera being established on
13 september 1923.
He was a technical director of the Mancomunitat de Catalunya railways, he directed (
1923-25) and projected the construction of the
Transversal Metropolitan Railway of Barcelona and other Catalan railway lines.
It is said that the President of the Mancomunitat de Catalunya,
Josep Puig i Cadafalch, entrusted him a study about the stability of the turn of plain brick, known as the "
Catalan turn", which is kept at the archive of the Institute of Catalan Studies.
He lectured at several universities in South America, teaching in those of Buenos Aires and
Rio de la Plata (
Uruguay) from
1936 to
39. Later he worked at the
Compañía Telefónica Nacional de España and served as a member of the
Higher Board of Scientific Research. When a chair of differential equations was established at Madrid, Terradas won it.
In (
1910) he published "Discrete elements of matter and radiation", "Corrientes marinas" (1941) and, to gain entry to the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, the volume "Neologismos, arcanismos in plàtica de ingenieros" (
1946). As an
encyclopedist, he authored several articles in the
Espasa Encyclopedia, including those on
Celestial Mechanics,
the Moon and
relativity.
*
2399 Terradas Asteroid named in his memory.
*
Locomotive Esteban Terradas, at the Railway Museum of
Ponferrada (Spain), named in his memory.
*
Esteban Terradas at the American Institute of Physics*
Roca Rosell, Antoni: Esteban Terradas (1883-1950) : ciencia y técnica en la España contemporánea; Antoni Roca Rosell, José Manuel Sánchez Ron; introduction from Enric Trillas.- Barcelona : Serbal : INTA, 1990.- 358 pages.
*
Esteban Terradas Lecciones sobre Física de materiales sólidos.- printed by INTA 1943
* This article draws on material in the
corresponding article in the
Catalan language Wikipedia. It may also draw on the following websites, none of which are in
English.
*
Esteban Terradas, A life given to science and technology*
Esteban Terradas science in the XX century Spain*
Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial Esteban Terradas*
Electricity in Catalonia, a history to be written*
Científicos y Tècnicos
