Sérgio Mascarenhas de Oliveira


Sérgio Mascarenhas de Oliveira is a noted Brazilian experimental physicist, educator and scientific leader. He has been awarded several prizes including the Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit in the categories of Commander and Great Cross, the Conrado Wessel Prize for General Science, the Joaquim da Costa Ribeiro Prize and the Guggenheim Fellowship.
His main contributions to science are new observations of the thermo-dielectric effect; the discovery of bioelectrets, i.e. electrets as a property of biological materials such as bone and biopolymers, enabling the development of a new detector used in radiological dosimetry to date human bones in archeological sites; and the development of a non-invasive procedure to measure intracranial pressure.
Mascarenhas has contributed to the creation of important Brazilian research institutions, such as the farming instrumentation center of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation and the Federal University of São Carlos.

Education

Mascarenhas earned his degree in Chemistry in 1951 from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and in Physics in 1952 from the Rio de Janeiro State University.
He has been a visiting scholar in many universities around the world, including Carnegie Mellon, Princeton, Harvard, MIT and University of London.

Federal University of São Carlos

Sérgio Mascarenhas played a major role in the establishment of the Federal University of São Carlos. Back in 1968, when the idea of creating the first federal university in São Paulo state came up, Mascarenhas proposed the creation of an innovative university instead of a traditional one. The Federal University of São Carlos was then established with that vision in mind and Mascarenhas was appointed the university's first rector, where he helped to create the materials engineering degree, the first of its kind in Latin America.