Blas Cabrera Felipe
Encyclopedia
Blas Cabrera y Felipe was a Spanish
physicist
.
in La Laguna
(Tenerife
, Spain
). He then moved to Madrid where he began studying law, following family tradition. He met at that time Santiago Ramón y Cajal
, who convinced him to abandon law and study science. He graduated from the Universidad Central de Madrid
(present day Complutense University of Madrid
) in Physics and Mathematics, earning a doctorate in Physics in 1901.
He was an experimental physicist, and developed his interests mostly in the field of magnetic properties of matter, achieving a prominent position among the physicists of his era. In 1903 he participated in the foundation of the Spanish Society of Physics and Chemistry and the annals of that society. In 1905, he obtained the chair of Electricity and Magnetism in the Universidad Central. He married María Sánchez Real in 1909. In 1910, the Junta de Ampliación de Estudios created the Laboratorio de Investigaciones Físicas, of which Cabrera was appointed as director. The Laboratory had five lines of investigation: magnetochemistry, physical chemistry, electrochemistry, electroanalysis and spectroscopy, and contributed greatly to the research and development of physics in Spain. With a grant from the Junta de Ampliación de Estudios (1912), Cabrera visited several European research centers including the Physics Laboratory of the Politechnic of Zurich
(directed by Peter Weiss), in which he carried out experiments in magnetochemistry. He also visited the physics laboratories of the universities of Geneva and Heidelberg, and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures
in Paris.
On returning to Spain, Cabrera used the techniques he had learned during his European tour, especially those developed in the Zurich laboratory, to continue his research on magnetism
, in collaboration with other researchers such as Enrique Moles y Ormella and Arturo Duperier.
Cabrera's research work was prolific. Between 1910 and 1934 he published about 110 works (Peter Heiss, then director of Strasbourg University's Physics Institute, commented in 1932 that among the 180 articles about magnetism present in the institute's library, 24 came from the Laboratorio de Investigaciones Físicas which Cabrera directed). He interpreted magnetization curves in terms of the Weiss magneton
. He modified Curie-Weiss's law, which describes the magnetic susceptibility of a ferromagnetic material in the paramagnetic region beyond Curie point
, and deduced an equation to describe an atom's magnetic moment
taking into account the effect of temperature.
At the same time, he improved many experimental devices. He was the first scientist in Spain to use the methods of the theory of errors
and of the least squares
for the determination of physical constants. Some of his measures of magnetic susceptibility
continue to be the most precise in existence.
However, his work was not solely investigation. He was also a great publisher and disseminator of modern theories of physics that were defined in the first thirty years of the 20th century. Thus, in 1912 he published an article in the magazine Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales titled "Fundamental principles of vectorial analysis in three-dimensional space and in Minkowski space
" ("Principios fundamentales del análisis vectorial en el espacio de tres dimensiones y en el Universo de Minkowski"). Along with the review published in 1912 by Esteban Terradas of Max von Laue
's book Das Relativitätsprincip, which had appeared the previous year, these works were meant to introduce the special theory of relativity to Spain.
Cabrera's work was also recognized on an international level. Cabrera was host to Albert Einstein
during his visit to Spain in 1923. In 1928 he became member of the French Academy of Sciences
, sponsored by physicists Paul Langevin
and Maurice de Broglie. That year he received the greatest recognition of his whole career: at the request of Einstein and Marie Curie
, Cabrera was named a member of the 6th Scientific Committee of the Solvay Conference
. These conferences, held triannually, brought together the world's finest physicists. In the Solvay Conference of 1930, Cabrera participated with a paper titled "The magnetic properties of matter."
In 1931 Cabrera was named director of the Universidad Central de Madrid. A year later, along with other scientists such as Miguel Ángel Catalán
and his disciple, Julio Palacios, he pushed for the creation of the National Institute of Physics and Chemistry with the aid of a donation from the Rockefeller Foundation
, and placed at the building known as the "Rockefeller building" at Serrano Street in Madrid. (Today the Rocasolano Chemical-Physics Institute, of the Spanish National Research Council, is located there.)
In 1931, Cabrera replaced Leonardo Torres Quevedo, who had abandoned his post due to health problems, at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures
. In 1933 he participated in the creation of the Summer International University of Santander (now the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo), being called as its director the following year. In 1936, he was in Santander at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War
. He went to France, and from there returned to Madrid. In 1937, the president of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, Pieter Zeeman
, named him secretary of that bureau, a post that would occupy him between 1937 and 1941, and he went to live to Paris. Nevertheless, after the end of the war, the Franco government demanded that he leave the post, even though the position had no representative value with respect to Spain. Cabrera resigned and went into self-exile in Mexico, where he was welcomed by the Faculty of Sciences at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, in which he became a Professor of Atomic Physics and History of Physics. In 1944 he began to direct the magazine Ciencia, edited by exiled Spanish scientists; after Cabrera's death the post passed to Ignacio Bolívar
. In this same year, the Spanish Cultural Institution of Buenos Aires published his last work, El magnetismo de la materia. He died in exile in Mexico in 1945.
(where he occupied the chair of his friend and teacher Santiago Ramón y Cajal), president of the Sociedad Española de Física y Química, director of the Laboratory of Physics Investigations (of the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios), director of the Instituto Nacional de Física y Química, foreign member of the French Academy of Sciences
, member of the Scientific Committee of the 6th Solvay Conference
of 1930 (Brussels), director of the Universidad Central de Madrid and of the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo, and secretary of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures
in Paris.
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
.
Biography
Cabrera received his baccalaureateBachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
in La Laguna
San Cristóbal de la Laguna
San Cristóbal de La Laguna is a city and municipality in the northern part of the island of Tenerife in the Province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, on the Canary Islands . The city is third-most populous city of the archipelago and second-most populous city of the island. It is a suburban area of the...
(Tenerife
Tenerife
Tenerife is the largest and most populous island of the seven Canary Islands, it is also the most populated island of Spain, with a land area of 2,034.38 km² and 906,854 inhabitants, 43% of the total population of the Canary Islands. About five million tourists visit Tenerife each year, the...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
). He then moved to Madrid where he began studying law, following family tradition. He met at that time Santiago Ramón y Cajal
Santiago Ramón y Cajal
Santiago Ramón y Cajal ForMemRS was a Spanish pathologist, histologist, neuroscientist, and Nobel laureate. His pioneering investigations of the microscopic structure of the brain were original: he is considered by many to be the father of modern neuroscience...
, who convinced him to abandon law and study science. He graduated from the Universidad Central de Madrid
Complutense University of Madrid
The Complutense University of Madrid is a university in Madrid, and one of the oldest universities in the world. It is located on a sprawling campus that occupies the entirety of the Ciudad Universitaria district of Madrid, with annexes in the district of Somosaguas in the neighboring city of...
(present day Complutense University of Madrid
Complutense University of Madrid
The Complutense University of Madrid is a university in Madrid, and one of the oldest universities in the world. It is located on a sprawling campus that occupies the entirety of the Ciudad Universitaria district of Madrid, with annexes in the district of Somosaguas in the neighboring city of...
) in Physics and Mathematics, earning a doctorate in Physics in 1901.
He was an experimental physicist, and developed his interests mostly in the field of magnetic properties of matter, achieving a prominent position among the physicists of his era. In 1903 he participated in the foundation of the Spanish Society of Physics and Chemistry and the annals of that society. In 1905, he obtained the chair of Electricity and Magnetism in the Universidad Central. He married María Sánchez Real in 1909. In 1910, the Junta de Ampliación de Estudios created the Laboratorio de Investigaciones Físicas, of which Cabrera was appointed as director. The Laboratory had five lines of investigation: magnetochemistry, physical chemistry, electrochemistry, electroanalysis and spectroscopy, and contributed greatly to the research and development of physics in Spain. With a grant from the Junta de Ampliación de Estudios (1912), Cabrera visited several European research centers including the Physics Laboratory of the Politechnic of Zurich
ETH Zurich
The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich or ETH Zürich is an engineering, science, technology, mathematics and management university in the City of Zurich, Switzerland....
(directed by Peter Weiss), in which he carried out experiments in magnetochemistry. He also visited the physics laboratories of the universities of Geneva and Heidelberg, and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures
International Bureau of Weights and Measures
The International Bureau of Weights and Measures , is an international standards organisation, one of three such organisations established to maintain the International System of Units under the terms of the Metre Convention...
in Paris.
On returning to Spain, Cabrera used the techniques he had learned during his European tour, especially those developed in the Zurich laboratory, to continue his research on magnetism
Magnetism
Magnetism is a property of materials that respond at an atomic or subatomic level to an applied magnetic field. Ferromagnetism is the strongest and most familiar type of magnetism. It is responsible for the behavior of permanent magnets, which produce their own persistent magnetic fields, as well...
, in collaboration with other researchers such as Enrique Moles y Ormella and Arturo Duperier.
Cabrera's research work was prolific. Between 1910 and 1934 he published about 110 works (Peter Heiss, then director of Strasbourg University's Physics Institute, commented in 1932 that among the 180 articles about magnetism present in the institute's library, 24 came from the Laboratorio de Investigaciones Físicas which Cabrera directed). He interpreted magnetization curves in terms of the Weiss magneton
Weiss magneton
The Weiss magneton was an experimentally derived unit of magnetic moment equal to joules per tesla, which is about 20% of the Bohr magneton. It was suggested in 1911 by Pierre Weiss.-Origin:...
. He modified Curie-Weiss's law, which describes the magnetic susceptibility of a ferromagnetic material in the paramagnetic region beyond Curie point
Curie point
In physics and materials science, the Curie temperature , or Curie point, is the temperature at which a ferromagnetic or a ferrimagnetic material becomes paramagnetic on heating; the effect is reversible. A magnet will lose its magnetism if heated above the Curie temperature...
, and deduced an equation to describe an atom's magnetic moment
Magnetic moment
The magnetic moment of a magnet is a quantity that determines the force that the magnet can exert on electric currents and the torque that a magnetic field will exert on it...
taking into account the effect of temperature.
At the same time, he improved many experimental devices. He was the first scientist in Spain to use the methods of the theory of errors
Errors and residuals in statistics
In statistics and optimization, statistical errors and residuals are two closely related and easily confused measures of the deviation of a sample from its "theoretical value"...
and of the least squares
Least squares
The method of least squares is a standard approach to the approximate solution of overdetermined systems, i.e., sets of equations in which there are more equations than unknowns. "Least squares" means that the overall solution minimizes the sum of the squares of the errors made in solving every...
for the determination of physical constants. Some of his measures of magnetic susceptibility
Magnetic susceptibility
In electromagnetism, the magnetic susceptibility \chi_m is a dimensionless proportionality constant that indicates the degree of magnetization of a material in response to an applied magnetic field...
continue to be the most precise in existence.
However, his work was not solely investigation. He was also a great publisher and disseminator of modern theories of physics that were defined in the first thirty years of the 20th century. Thus, in 1912 he published an article in the magazine Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales titled "Fundamental principles of vectorial analysis in three-dimensional space and in Minkowski space
Minkowski space
In physics and mathematics, Minkowski space or Minkowski spacetime is the mathematical setting in which Einstein's theory of special relativity is most conveniently formulated...
" ("Principios fundamentales del análisis vectorial en el espacio de tres dimensiones y en el Universo de Minkowski"). Along with the review published in 1912 by Esteban Terradas of Max von Laue
Max von Laue
Max Theodor Felix von Laue was a German physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals...
's book Das Relativitätsprincip, which had appeared the previous year, these works were meant to introduce the special theory of relativity to Spain.
Cabrera's work was also recognized on an international level. Cabrera was host to Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
during his visit to Spain in 1923. In 1928 he became member of the French Academy of Sciences
French Academy of Sciences
The French Academy of Sciences is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research...
, sponsored by physicists Paul Langevin
Paul Langevin
Paul Langevin was a prominent French physicist who developed Langevin dynamics and the Langevin equation. He was one of the founders of the Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes, an antifascist organization created in the wake of the 6 February 1934 far right riots...
and Maurice de Broglie. That year he received the greatest recognition of his whole career: at the request of Einstein and Marie Curie
Marie Curie
Marie Skłodowska-Curie was a physicist and chemist famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first person honored with two Nobel Prizes—in physics and chemistry...
, Cabrera was named a member of the 6th Scientific Committee of the Solvay Conference
Solvay Conference
The International Solvay Institutes for Physics and Chemistry, located in Brussels, were founded by the Belgian industrialist Ernest Solvay in 1912, following the historic invitation-only 1911 Conseil Solvay, the turning point in world physics...
. These conferences, held triannually, brought together the world's finest physicists. In the Solvay Conference of 1930, Cabrera participated with a paper titled "The magnetic properties of matter."
In 1931 Cabrera was named director of the Universidad Central de Madrid. A year later, along with other scientists such as Miguel Ángel Catalán
Miguel Ángel Catalán
Miguel Antonio Catalán Sañudo was a Spanish spectroscopist. Born in Zaragoza, he obtained his degree in chemistry from the University of Zaragoza and received in doctorate in Madrid in 1917. In 1920, he began work as a researcher at Imperial College London...
and his disciple, Julio Palacios, he pushed for the creation of the National Institute of Physics and Chemistry with the aid of a donation from the Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
, and placed at the building known as the "Rockefeller building" at Serrano Street in Madrid. (Today the Rocasolano Chemical-Physics Institute, of the Spanish National Research Council, is located there.)
In 1931, Cabrera replaced Leonardo Torres Quevedo, who had abandoned his post due to health problems, at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures
International Bureau of Weights and Measures
The International Bureau of Weights and Measures , is an international standards organisation, one of three such organisations established to maintain the International System of Units under the terms of the Metre Convention...
. In 1933 he participated in the creation of the Summer International University of Santander (now the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo), being called as its director the following year. In 1936, he was in Santander at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. He went to France, and from there returned to Madrid. In 1937, the president of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, Pieter Zeeman
Pieter Zeeman
Pieter Zeeman was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Hendrik Lorentz for his discovery of the Zeeman effect.-Childhood and youth:...
, named him secretary of that bureau, a post that would occupy him between 1937 and 1941, and he went to live to Paris. Nevertheless, after the end of the war, the Franco government demanded that he leave the post, even though the position had no representative value with respect to Spain. Cabrera resigned and went into self-exile in Mexico, where he was welcomed by the Faculty of Sciences at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, in which he became a Professor of Atomic Physics and History of Physics. In 1944 he began to direct the magazine Ciencia, edited by exiled Spanish scientists; after Cabrera's death the post passed to Ignacio Bolívar
Ignacio Bolívar
Ignacio Bolívar y Urrutia was a Spanish naturalist and entomologist, and one of the founding fathers of Spanish entomology...
. In this same year, the Spanish Cultural Institution of Buenos Aires published his last work, El magnetismo de la materia. He died in exile in Mexico in 1945.
Positions
Cabrera held several positions and belonged to numerous institutions: member and president of the Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, member of the Real Academia EspañolaReal Academia Española
The Royal Spanish Academy is the official royal institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, but is affiliated with national language academies in twenty-one other hispanophone nations through the Association of Spanish Language Academies...
(where he occupied the chair of his friend and teacher Santiago Ramón y Cajal), president of the Sociedad Española de Física y Química, director of the Laboratory of Physics Investigations (of the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios), director of the Instituto Nacional de Física y Química, foreign member of the French Academy of Sciences
French Academy of Sciences
The French Academy of Sciences is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research...
, member of the Scientific Committee of the 6th Solvay Conference
Solvay Conference
The International Solvay Institutes for Physics and Chemistry, located in Brussels, were founded by the Belgian industrialist Ernest Solvay in 1912, following the historic invitation-only 1911 Conseil Solvay, the turning point in world physics...
of 1930 (Brussels), director of the Universidad Central de Madrid and of the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo, and secretary of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures
International Bureau of Weights and Measures
The International Bureau of Weights and Measures , is an international standards organisation, one of three such organisations established to maintain the International System of Units under the terms of the Metre Convention...
in Paris.
Works
- La teoria de los magnetones y la magnetoquímica de los compuestos férricos (1912).
- Principios fundamentales de análisis vectorial en el espacio de tres dimensiones y en el Universo de Minkowski (1912 13).
- Estado actual de la teoría de los rayos X y Y. Su aplicación al estudio de la estructura de la materia (1915).
- ¿Qué es la electricidad? (1917).
- MagnétoChimie (1918).
- El estado actual de la teoría del magnetismo (19161919).
- Principio de relatividad (1923).
- Paramagnetismo y estructura del átomo y de la molécula (19232627).
- El átomo y sus propiedades electromagnéticas (1927).
- L'étude expérimentale du paramagnétisme. Le magnéton (1931).
- Electricidad y teoría de la materia (1933).
- Diaet paramagnétisme et structure de la matiére (1937).
- El atomismo y su evolución (1942).
- El magnetismo de la materia (1944).