Dr. José Leite Lopes
A man who made physics great in Brazil.
Here's a time line of Dr. Leite Lopes's life:
- 1935 - he began a course in Industrial Chemistry at the Pernambuco School of Engineering
- 1940 - He joined the Physics course at the National Faculty of Philosophy, in Rio de Janeiro.
- 1942 - He received a scholarship to work at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the following year he received another scholarship to the University of São Paulo.
- 1949 - He was the great political articulator of the foundation of the Brazilian Center for Physical Research (CBPF), an institute that he created together with César Lattes.
- 1958 - Prediction of the existence of a neutral vector boson (Z boson), through the elaboration of an equation that showed the analogy of the weak nuclear interaction with electromagnetism.
- 1967 - He was elected president of the Brazilian Society of Physics (SBF).
- 1973 - Jubilee Medal of the Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science, for services rendered to Science in Brazil.
- 1981 - Medal of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, CNPq, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of that institution.
- 1985 - Estácio de Sá Prize for Science from the Government of the State of Rio de Janeiro.
- 1985 - Order of Rio Branco, in the degree of Grand Officer.
- 1986 - Louis Pasteur University Medal, Strasbourg, France.
- 1986 - Carneiro Felippe Medal from the National Nuclear Energy Commission.
- 1989 - Gold Medal and the Álvaro Alberto National Science Award.
- 1989 - Ordre des Palmes Academiques, by the Prime Minister of France, degree of Officier.
- 1989 - Ordre National du Mérite, by President François Mitterrand, degree of Officier.
- 1993 - Mexico Science and Technology Award for Latin America.
- 1994 - Grand Cross of the National Order of Scientific Merit.
- 1999 - UNESCO Science Prize at the World Conference on Science, Budapest.
"Leite Lopes was, above all, a passionate man, moved by a refined ethical and aesthetic sense. According to him, 'passion is a violent movement towards something that you admire, love, desire and want for yourself alone, that is passion'."
Senior Researcher at the Brazilian Center for Physics Research, Associate Professor at the Armando Dias Tavares Institute of Physics at the State University of Rio de Janeiro - Francisco Caruso Neto