Margaret Murnane and Antonio Colinas new Doctors Honoris Causa from USAL

The Irish physicist Margaret Murnane and the Leonese poet Antonio Colinas were invested as honorary doctors from the University of Salamanca on June 19.

The investiture ceremony was presided over by the rector, Ricardo Rivero, and held in the Auditorium of the Escuelas Mayores.

The ceremony held in Latin, in which professors Carlos Hernández García and María Ángeles Pérez López, from the Department of Applied Physics and the Department of Spanish and Latin American Literature, respectively, acted as godfather and godmother of the new honorary doctors, had the assistance from numerous academic and institutional authorities.

The proposal of the Department of Applied Physics to appoint the scientist Margaret Mary Murnane as doctor honoris causa was defended by Professor Carlos Hernández García. Professor Murnane’s work focuses on the science of X-rays and ultra-fast lasers. Her multiple discoveries have transformed the field, making it possible to capture and manipulate quantum dynamics on the faster time scales relevant to atoms, molecules, and materials.

Her research is distinguished by its innovation, impact and transversality, integrating laser technology as a transforming element in various fields such as optics, magnetism, chemistry, materials engineering or biology. Her ideas have been widely adopted in the worlds of science and industry. In fact, laser light sources based on her work can be found in most universities and research institutions around the world.

During her acceptance speech, Professor Murnane highlighted the scientific collaboration that she has maintained for a decade with the Research Group on Laser Applications and Photonics in Applied Physics and Technology, which she recognized as one of the few research groups in the world with knowledge both optical science and quantum mechanics and atomic physics.

With her appointment as an honorary doctorate, Professor Margaret Murnane has become the eleventh woman to receive that honor at the University of Salamanca. The exhibition “Women honorary doctors at the University of Salamanca”, coordinated by professors Esther del Brío, professor of Financial Economics, and Inmaculada Sánchez Barrios, director of the Equality Unit, already has a panel commemorating the incorporation of Professor Murnane into the faculty of doctors.