Mexico City. Arcadio Poveda Ricalde, a prominent Mexican astronomer, died today at the age of 91, announced El Colegio Nacional, of which he was a member.
Also an emeritus researcher at the UNAM Institute of Astronomy (IA), he received numerous awards, including the 1975 National Prize for Sciences and Arts. He was the founder of the National Astronomical Observatory in San Pedro Mártir, Baja California, and of the Mexican Academy of Sciences and member of the International Astronomical Union of the American Astronomical Society, the Royal Astronomical Society and the New York Academy of Sciences.
He was born in the city of Mérida, Yucatán, on July 15, 1930. He studied Theoretical Physics and Mathematics at the Faculty of Sciences of the UNAM and at the University of California at Berkeley, where he completed his doctorate in Astronomy. He worked at the Tacubaya Observatory and later at the Leuschner Observatory of the University of California.
He was a visiting researcher at the Institut d’Astrophysique in Paris, at Columbia University, at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, and at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Science in San Diego. He was also a professor at the Faculty of Sciences at UNAM and at the universities of Nebraska and New York.
Poveda Ricalde developed the so-called “Poveda Method” (1958) to determine the masses of individual galaxies, spherical and ellipsoidal, which until then were unknown. He also has important contributions to the study of supernovae and double and multiple stars, according to his profile of the Science Advisory Council.
“Some of his articles on the dynamics of stellar systems and galaxies are already classics of the astronomical literature,” he stressed.
The National College highlighted that Poveda Ricalde was one of the most outstanding astronomers in the country, “he received the main recognitions of his community, which today loses one of its most prominent figures.” Through social networks, he expressed his condolences to family, friends and colleagues.
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