Physicist, first President of the Academy

Pedro Miguel Etxenike was born in Isaba (Navarre) in 1950. He is professor of condensed matter physics at the Universidad del País Vasco, President of the Donostia International Physics Center, the CIC Nanogune and Jakiunde, and Deputy Chairman of Innobasque. He conducted his post-doc studies at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and was a Nordita Fellow in Lund and Copenhagen. He holds PhDs from Cambridge and Barcelona universities. From 1980 to 1984 he was Minister of Education and Culture and spokesman of the Basque Government. He was an Overseas Fellow at Churchill College and visiting professor at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the American Physics Society (APS) and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (FAAAS). He was named Basque Person of the Year 1998. He is a member of the Scientific Board of the Fundación BBVA, and of the Trilateral Commission, and is also a board director of IDOM and MAPFRE Norte. Etxenike is member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Belgium.

Throughout his career he has received a number of prizes, including the Munibe, Euskadi, Dupont, Príncipe de Viana, Príncipe de Asturias, Max Planck and Iberdrola awards, and the National Blas Cabrera award. He was awarded the Great Cross of Alfonso X the Wise, the Gold Medal of the Universidad del País Vasco, the City of San Sebastian, the Real Sociedad Española de Física, and the Gold Medal of Gipuzkoa. He holds an honorary degree from the Universidad de Valladolid and the Universidad Pública de Navarra, and a Doctor Science from the University of Cambridge.

He has published over 300 papers in specialist journals. His area of research centres on condensed matter physics, electron microscopy and the interaction of charges and radiation with matter.

Interview with Euskonews

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