About Pedro

Pedro Félix González Díaz was born the 2nd of July of 1947 in Larache (Spanish protectorate in Morocco until 1956). He was proud of both his African origin and his Andalusian heritage. He always showed proofs of his creative thinking, which he was able to capture through writing, drawing, investigating and discussing.

He graduated in Chemistry at the University of Granada in 1970 and completed his PhD in Science at the Complutense University of Madrid in 1974. He joined the Institute of Optics of CSIC in 1975. There, he founded several laboratories to study aspects of the structure and dynamics of molecules using radiation. He applied also those technics to the study of components with medical and biological interests. Meanwhile, he started to investigate in different fields of Theoretical Physics in a self-taught way. He first explored problems in Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Optics and then moved towards General Relativity. It is worth mentioning that in 1983 he deduced an entropy bound for closed gravitating systems that is key for the study of several problems in theoretical physics, which is, however, known nowadays as the Bekenstein bound. In 1992 he decided to move to the Institute of Mathematics and Fundamental Physics (former Institute of Fundamental Physics) of CSIC, focusing his attention in Classical and Quantum Cosmology. In 2000 he started a very productive decade during which he studied different questions based on the recently formulated dark energy and novel approaches to the multiverse. (If you are interested in understanding the views of Pedro about cosmology or in seeing some nice caricatures made by him, please, click here).

During his prolific career, he founded different experimental and theoretical research groups. He supervised several PhD students. (You can download his genealogical tree here). Despite of his overwhelming character, or may be because of it, he knew how to boost the abilities of his trainees, strengthening their independence as researchers.

He got specially engaged with popular science during the last period of his career. He founded the theatre group “Francisca Cortés Guillén” and the Ecological Station of Biocosmology, both in Medellín (Badajoz, Spain).

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