The rear gardens of the Physics and Mathematics building of the University of La Laguna (ULL) house, from this Thursday, a sculpture in tribute to the father of Spanish physics, Blas Cabrera Felipe.
The piece is based on a cube devised by the honoree’s grandson, Luis Blas Cabrera, which contains chemical elements from the periodic table referring to rare earths, details the ULL in a statement.
The sculpture has been inaugurated in an act in which Eloísa del Pino, director of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), has participated, who has indicated that “it is not that this tribute is deserved, it is that it was about time”, referring to to the recognition of one of the most brilliant researchers in Spain, exiled during the Franco regime.
Del Pino recalled that the embryo of the CSIC was the Board of Expansion of Studies, directed by Ramón y Cajal.
And that thanks to the mediation of Blas Cabrera, the National Institute of Physics and Chemistry, financed by Rockefeller, was built, today right next to the CSIC headquarters in Madrid.
This Board had to dissolve with the arrival of the war and the departure of many researchers to Mexico, a country that welcomed them wonderfully, Del Pino highlighted.
The rector of the ULL, Rosa Aguilar, closed the event with the discovery of the plaque alluding to the sculpture and thanking the team of the Artistic Foundry Workshop for the work carried out, as well as the collaboration of Professor Jorge Méndez, who has supervised the entire process. creation of the work and its transfer from Fine Arts to Physics-Mathematics.
In addition, the La Laguna City Council together with the Higher Council for Scientific Research and the University of La Laguna have paid tribute to the scientist with a symbolic act in the San Luis cemetery, where his mortal remains rest after being repatriated by the La Laguna City Council in October of last year.
The mayor of La Laguna, Luis Yeray Gutiérrez, the president of the CSIC, Eloísa del Pino, and the dean of the ULL Faculty of Sciences, María del Mar Afonso, have laid a wreath at Cabrera’s tomb in an act which was attended by family members, representatives of the Honorary Consulate of Mexico, the Cabildo de Tenerife and the Canarian Investigation Agency of the Government of the Canary Islands. “We honor the memory of one of the great scientists of the 20th century, an exceptional figure in our country, a universal canary,” said the mayor of La Laguna, who reiterated “the City Council’s commitment to, hand in hand with other institutions , to continue working not only to remember his figure, but to disseminate his work and his undoubted scientific contribution”.
