Obituary of Marcos Moshinsky

Marcos Moshinsky, physicist, pioneer of nuclear science in Latin America and main architect of physics in Mexico, died April 1, 2009 in Mexico City, Mexico. Born in Kiev, Ucrania, in 1921, he arrived in Mexico at age 6. He received his bachelor’s degree in Physics from the National University of Mexico ( UNAM), his M.Sc. in 1947 and his Ph. D. in 1949, both from Princeton University, working under the supervision of Nobel laureate Eugene P. Wigner. He returned to UNAM and initiated a long and brilliant career that was marked by important contributions to nuclear structure physics as well as to mathematical physics, particularly to the application of group theoretical methods to diverse fields. He is best known for the Brody-Moshinsky brackets, which he analytically derived in 1960 and his colleague Thomas Brody evaluated, using the first scientific computer on campus (and in the country). His “Transformation Brackets” or " Moshinskets” tables circulated all over the world. His papers on symmetry methods and the many-body-problem had also a large worldwide impact.

Beginning in the early 1950’s he started supervising students, many of which later became leaders in the physics community. He supervised nearly 20 Ph.D. students and a dozen postdoctoral fellows from many countries. He was founder of the Mexican Physical Society and Director of the Revista Mexicana de Fisica, and also founder of the Mexican Academy of Science and the Latin American School of Physics, all of which are active to this day.

Marcos Moshinsky received many honors, including being elected to the Pontificial Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Science, as a Fellow of the APS and, early-on, named president of the Mexican Academy of Science. He was elected to the " Colegio Nacional”, a 40 member association of the most distinguished artists, writers, academics and scientists in the country. He received many awards, including the National Prize for Science, the Principe de Asturias Prize and the Wigner Medal. He wrote more than 400 articles for the general press, always stating his views with courage and clarity and promoting science and technology in a country that, unfortunately, has yet to embark decisively on this road. In 1991 he was awarded the " Andrei Zakharov” medal for his defense of human rights in the former Soviet Union, which included his personal assistance to seminars held in private homes of expelled scientists in Moscow.

He was a beloved teacher and mentor and is considered by many as one of the initiators of a modern, professional and successful scientific tradition at UNAM and the country.

Those who worked with him learned from his elegant and powerful insights into physical problems, always reflected in his hundreds of papers and in his two books: “Group Theory and the many Body Problem” (1968) and " The Harmonic Oscillator in Modern Physics: From Atoms to Quarks” (1969 and 1996). Those that knew him were always surprised by the endless joy he found working at his blackboard and sharing the ideas behind his work, his boundless energy and, specially, by his great generosity. He has left a huge, empty space which will be very hard to fill.