Professor José Barluenga, in memoriam

Last night, José (Pepe) Barluenga passed away. For many of the senior group leaders of ICIQ a close friend and mentor is gone. We will all miss him.

Prof. Barluenga (right) received the ICIQ’s Fèlix Serratosa medal from the hands of Prof. Pericàs in 2011.

Pepe Barluenga was born in Tardienta (Aragón, Spain) in 1940. He studied chemistry in Zaragoza (Ph.D. in 1966, with V. Gómez Aranda) and after a 4 year post-doctoral stage at the Max-Planck Institut für Kohlenforschung (with H. Hoberg) he started his independent career at CSIC and University of Zaragoza. In 1975 he moved to the University of Oviedo as a full professor. There, in a difficult environment, he was able to create the most successful and internationally recognized school of synthetic organometallic chemistry in Spain.

From the scientific policy perspective, he made an important contribution to the creation of the culture of excellence in chemical research in Spain. This has been key to the increasingly significant weight of Spanish chemistry in the international context.

Pepe Barluenga has had a long and fruitful collaboration with ICIQ. He served as the first head of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Institute and he was the recipient of the first ICIQ’s Félix Serratosa Medal for the achievements in his scientific career in 2011.

The whole ICIQ community joins Barluenga’s wife, Maricruz Badiola, their children, Sofía Ana, Marta, Gonzalo, Gurutze and Mayte, and his closest collaborators in their loss.

Miquel A. Pericàs
Director
Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia