The Rise and Development of Physics in Cuba: An Interview with Hugo Pérez Rojas in May 2009

Abstract

Hugo Celso Pérez Rojas was born in 1938, and works as a senior researcher at the Institute of Cybernetics, Mathematics and Physics, at the Ministry of Science and Technology, Cuba. Pérez Rojas is emeritus member of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba, member of the Latin American Academy of Sciences and Fellow TWAS since 1994. He was one of the founders of the School of Physics in the University of Havana in 1962, and moved in 1971 to the Cuban Academy of Sciences. His national awards include the Rafael Maria Mendive and Carlos J. Finlay Medals. He was awarded in 2011 the National Prize in Physics from the Cuban Physical Society. His interests include quantum field theory and its applications to finite temperature problems in high-energy physics and condensed matter. Among these, Pérez Rojas has devoted special attention to quantum electrodynamics in matter and in vacuum in the presence of external fields, phase transitions in electroweak theory, relativistic quantum Hall effect, Bose-Einstein condensation in magnetic fields, and applications of physics to social sciences. He is interviewed here by Angelo Baracca in May 2009.