María Josefa Yzuel receives the Spanish Royal Society of Physics Medal

21/05/2015

Dr María Josefa Yzuel, emeritus professor of the UAB Department of Physics, was announced the winner of the 2014 Medal from the Spanish Royal Society of Physics (RSEF) for her "scientific and academic career which has contributed notably to the progress made in the field of Optics". The award is part of the "Physics Prizes 2014".
 
On 19 May, Professor Yzuel received the award in a ceremony held at the BBVA Foundation headquarters in Madrid. The event was presided by Carmen Vela, Secretary of State for Research, Development and Innovation; Rafael Pardo, director of the BBVA Foundation; and José Adolfo de Azcárraga, president of RSEF. The ceremony was also attended by Antoni Méndez, dean of the UAB Faculty of Science.
 
The awards, which include a total of 50,000 Euros in prize money in all eight categories, are awarded each year to the most prestigious physics in Spain. In this year's edition, coinciding with the celebration of what the United Nations has declared as the International Year of Light, the winners come from areas ranging from the improvement of human vision to the interaction of light with matter at atomic scale.
 
Dr María Josefa Yzuel was the first Spanish woman to hold a stable university position in the area of Physics, a position she occupied in 1971. Her research in image processing and liquid crystals is internationally known and she complements this research with her importance in several distinguished scientific organisations. Her candidacy received the support of outstanding professionals, such as Nobel Laureate Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and Ignacio Cirac, Head of the Theory Division at the Max-Planck Institute of Quantum Optics. Dr Yzuel presides the Spanish committee responsible for the activities programme of the 2015 International Year of Light.