Sciences and Research
The most notable icons in Ecuadorian sciences are the mathematician and cartographer Pedro Vicente Maldonado, born in Riobamba in 1707, and the printer, independence precursor, and medical pioneer Eugenio Espejo, born in 1747 in Quito. Among other notable Ecuadorian scientists and engineers are Lieutenant Jose Rodriguez Lavandera, a pioneer who built the first submarine in Latin America in 1837; Reinaldo Espinosa Aguilar (1898–1950), a botanist and biologist of Andean flora; and José Aurelio Dueñas (1880–1961), a chemist and inventor of a method of textile serigraphy.
The major areas of scientific research in Ecuador have been in the medical fields, tropical and infectious diseases treatments, agricultural engineering, pharmaceutical research, and bioengineering. Being a small country and a consumer of foreign technology, Ecuador has favored research supported by entrepreneurship in information technology. The antivirus program Checkprogram and banking protection system MdLock and the Core Banking Software Cobis are products of Ecuadorian development.
The scientific production in hard sciences has been limited due to lack of funding but focused around science of materials in Physics and Statistics in Mathematics. In the case of engineering fields, the majority of the scientific production comes from the top three polytechnic institutions: ESPOL (Escuela Superior Politecnica del Litoral), ESPE (Escuela Superior Politecnica del Ejercito) and EPN (Escuela Politecnica Nacional).
Contemporary Ecuadorian scientists who have been recognized by international institutions are Eugenia del Pino (born 1945), the first Ecuadorian to be elected to the United States National Academy of Science, and Arturo Villavicencio, who was part of the working group of the IPCC which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore for their dissemination of the effects of climate change.
Currently, the politics of research and investigation are managed by the National Secretary of Higher Education, Science and Technology Senescyt.
Read more about this topic: Subdivisions Of Ecuador
Famous quotes containing the words sciences and, sciences and/or research:
“Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing culture in our land.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
“All cultural change reduces itself to a difference of categories. All revolutions, whether in the sciences or world history, occur merely because spirit has changed its categories in order to understand and examine what belongs to it, in order to possess and grasp itself in a truer, deeper, more intimate and unified manner.”
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“I did my research and decided I just had to live it.”
—Karina O’Malley, U.S. sociologist and educator. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A5 (September 16, 1992)