Esteban Terradas I Illa - Education and Academic Career

Education and Academic Career

He held two doctorates (in mathematics and physics) on 1904, as well as two degrees in engineering, from the ETSEIB school. 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.

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 Commonwealth of Catalonia. 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, organized by Terradas, the Catalan Government, the Mancomunitat, and Rafael Campalans. Terradas also was the driving force behind a series of scientific monographs 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".

He lectured at several universities in South America, teaching in those of Buenos Aires and Rio de la Plata (Uruguay) from 1936 to 39. When a chair of differential equations was later established at Madrid, Terrades won it.