TESE De Doutoramento

THE SCIENTIFIC PERSONALITY OF ANTÓNIO GIÃO ABSTRACT This Dissertation aims to be the first biography of a scientist fallen into oblivion, and to explain how he was forgotten. It starts by the postulation of pragmatics of scientific discourse as a methodology, and reviews pertinent literature on scientific biographies. His career starts as an independent young student, writing to scholars and attending scientific meetings unconcerned with his masters. Strasbourg and Bergen are instances of his early maturity, linked in the former with early papers in French and in German, some of them as reports of scientific events; in the latter, in the conception of mathematical methods published as three books in Paris. Here, the first major conflict will take place, enacting his isolation. A fruit of his loneliness will be an inconsequent travel along Phenomenological Physics. War and”exile” in his native village lead him swiftly towards Fundamental Physics, expressed in his return to Paris and through publication in Portuguese journals. A lifeline suddenly interrupted in 1951, when the rupture with his mentor, Louis de Broglie, occurred. Gião‟s start-over in Meteorology begins in 1952 through an invention; the absence of success of this device merges unnoticed among his large scientific production. These are the Italy years, and Piccardi‟s experiment appears as a new subject in his research. Return to Portugal in 1960 is the moment of eclectic intervention: – he teaches two chairs in the Faculty of Sciences; 5 – there, however, conflicts take place, towards the students and colleagues; – he heads the”Centro de Cálculo Científico” (Scientific Calculus Center) since 1963, thus being – both the Centre and the Director – the pioneers of Informatics in Portugal; – the journal of his Centro coincides from there onwards with his scientific profile. Meteorology, with an emphasis in Dynamic Climatology, Mathematical Physics, and Cosmology are main areas of work, as well as particle physics, where he abandons models developed in the forties; – his 1967 conference may have been the”swan‟s farewell song”, since the next (and last) two years are of residual publishing after a severe kidney disease. The above topics are treated both chronologically and thematically. The Dissertation reviews a hundred original documents and concludes with a systematic analysis. 6 0. 1.PREVIEW The preparation of this Thesis method has evolved over years of research and continuous rewritten. This method stemmed initially from the context - structure and publish the vast existing acquis, never previously studied Casa Antonio Gião. So I left three basic documents, the first of which had been found in that house for students of History of Thought Mathematician at the University of Évora (* 1) , and corresponded to a handwritten notes, almost illegible, abruptly interrupted, Gião have them will be appreciated written, can guess at the end of life. It is a founding option in this paper that, contrary to what is the university paradigm par excellence where research is shaped in teaching, an inverse work so made sense in the present investigation. It is common in much of Anthropology : a field informant may propose to the University data to which this demand to the treatment they are able; so, I try to doctorate me, show me worthy of the students I had. The second document that structured the work was performed by the literature Gião (93A) , (* 2) , which later in life (the last sixty years) dactilogra¬fado a first document, then successive attempts handwritten, it will tried to complete, as we shall see in the Document Source # 77. I have been faithful to this bibliography, and always used the numbering of Gião, I sought complete; In doing this, I did not use the reference Almeida Costa (1971) , less extensive. These are numbers that will index the texts referred to above in” Chronology”, but also” Power Lines” and” General Hermeneutics." In this sense, I found some contradiction with the literature prepared with Professor Carlos Fiolhais and its General Library of the team from the University of Coimbra, which I have some support, and include almost verbatim. Not solve this contradiction on a few dates, keeping me true to form as Gião regarded the order of his writings. Deliver, with the Thesis, the Bibliography to the 2008 date; was will of both subscribers give it final form, but this Thesis deserved priority. 7 The third document is the order of appointment (* 3) in the Government Gazette, which is later presented as Document Source # 74 - signed by Ramos and Costa, Vicente Almeida Gonçalves and Costa. Much of which will be taken up in the obituary Gião (Almeida Costa, 1971). A first version, when taking possession and the second, the obituary is published in the Bulletin of the Faculty of Sciences. These news refer the issue of tripartite work of Gião, sites where there had been worked and the authors who have made it reviews. In the final phase of the rewrite, I had access to the Proceedings of the School of the Faculty of Science Council, and find in them a much more accurate version of what these three teachers; I transcribe it, and took it as a source for institutional ties of Gião, matter on which questions remained until then, given the absence of documents on the point. The method adopted depended on the heterogeneity of accessible elements. I went for that, forced to define a concept and strategy. I define pragmatics of scientific discourse as the relationship between the published work and the read / host / consequent behavior of the readers community; is a rarefacta version injunction of bibliometrics, and I stand to be appropriate in the case of Gião because, as we shall see, their texts are rarely mentioned by someone else, and the number of book reviews, quotes or other forms of reaction is less than the amount of securities. Will be the method, in general, the core of this work, which focuses on a chronological list. It is completed whenever there are relevant ite, a discourse analysis, be it scientific, is institutional. Pragmatics is the semantic opposite, and is a less ambitious art (Recanati, 2003) ; the semantics of a scientific paper is the specification of its internal intelligibility; now, the work of Gião is often tight, rarely understood by others. There are more texts, said he, than scheduled book reviews; rarer still seem to be the quote by someone else; these various modes of interaction - those mentioned, as well as the rare reference Gião by other authors; correspondence; some invitations; reading notes; participation in institutions, when corroborated by documents or contradicted 8 by words - the case of the”missing” CIRMM; academic actions, thoughts exposed more informally and therefore more intelligible - all these elements, I will articulate and make sense. From a semantic point of view, only the last; with a pragmatic grid the other. This will attempted a second time, a biography of Gião, with the first being constituted by the autobiographical notes. There is a gap between the number of book reviews of authors, listed by Almeida Costa, transcripts of the documents mentioned above, and those found in the research online journals declared by him and the two other subscribers Appointment of Order - Zentralblatt fur die Mathematick and Mathematical Reviews. It is a failure that has not had access to the files of that teacher, did not know initially solve. The error would, perhaps, in the name of the journals where authors such as Pascual Jordan (* 4) or Lichnerowicz could have done the book reviews; or in another type of error, the postulate the publication of non-existent book reviews, an analysis that forced the critical carefully the sources accessed. And it was this critical analysis, which prove a major source - Appointment of Order - is incorrect; the proof is in the final paragraph of the thesis, to be listed all the book reviews in magazines above. In any case I completed the book reviews obtained in this way, with others, for there was at that time the systematic recension habit in Physics Abstracts journal. It was a case of serendipity (* 5). Leafing through systematically handwritten records that Gião devoted to book reviews of your work, I found the this publication, that nothing in the previous investigation would suspect - one of the points where the physical and mathematical identities appear to be not communicating vessels... I managed to find more references to Gião, for example in Meteorology thesis at MIT, and surprisingly a long read note from Professor Suzanne Daveau at the end Gião 's life, which integrates more transdisciplinary fraction of his vast work. A similar gloom hangs over the institutions where Gião will state, and the times when they did, before returning to Portugal - could not, in any case, confirm the existence of a contractual relationship. These are points where the biography that I let 9 insufficiently clear, and that may have contributed, during the life of Gião to nimbar its mythical and distant image... certainly with the benevolent consent of the person concerned. Here, the critical comparison of the sources leans the most informative - the Act cited the School Board of the Faculty of Sciences... By the time I was looking for a historical narrative with continuity, pointed out where I could other scientific instruments, whether they were the chairs, relations with students when documented, quarrels with colleagues, Gião projects and perfectly distinct professional practice of other, more structured its documentation, which was the center of the Scientific Calculation. And in the final stage of rewriting, managed to glean some reports of its activities at the Faculty of Sciences. Before that, in the first phase of this work sometimes was needed to further examine certain issues in more detail.

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