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Obituary Vicente Mayagoitia, 1945-1996 Vicente Mayagoitia graduated as a Chemical Engineer from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma, Mexico, in 1967, as a Docteur Ingenieur at the Universite Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France, in 1971, and received a Doctorat d’Etat in Physical Sciences from the Institut Polytechnique National of Toulouse in 1977. Since the founding of the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico in 1973, where he was a full Professor until his death, he worked actively in organizing the Department of Chemistry and especially the area of Physical Chemistry of Surfaces, developing and leading an active research group in adsorption, colloids, and porous media. He was a visiting professor at the Instituto Politecnico Nacional, Mexico, the Universidad Nacional de San Luis, Argentina, and the Institut d’Ingenierie Chimique, Toulouse, France. He was a founding member of the Academia Nacional de Ingenieria, Mexico, a member of the International Commitee on Pore Structure and Properties of Materials, and the International Adsorption Society. He published more than 70 articles on adsorption, colloids and porous structure, and applications to catalysis, textile industry, drying processes, and polymer science. His pioneer work on the characterization of disordered porous media opened new horizons in this field in the 1980s. He was one of the developers of the so-called “discrete models” for the characterization of porous structures, which map the porous space into a network of interconnected discrete elements. In this connection, he proposed the dual sitebond (DSB) model in which he identified the voids of the porous space as sites and the necks interconnecting the voids as bonds. He then showed that one could define a correlation function which, while preserving the maximum randomness of the medium, could generate different porous structures with a minimum number of parameters. The DSB model provides a simple and natural framework to describe porous networks with different degrees of organization and allows the study of their percolation properties and the prediction of the behavior of fluids in such media. On the basis of this model, he developed important applications to the characterization of porous solids by nitrogen adsorption and mercury porosimetry, catalysts deactivation, and immiscible fluids displacement, among others. The same idea provided also a powerful method for the statistical description of the adsorptive field of heterogeneous solid surfaces, a method which is currently being intensively investigated by several groups. All those who met Vicente will miss him, both for his scientific creativity and for his warm and generous human
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quality. He was able to enjoy both research work and life to the extent that no one could match. A close relationship between the joy of work and the joy of life characterized his personality. His lectures were a combination of fascinating scientific information and humor which sometimes shocked people who did not know him. They also contained philosophical reflections. He often stressed the fact that he was a pure blooded descendant of Indians, but the Latin American qualities such as spontaneous actions, profound emotional ties with friends, fascination with beauty of women, and love for music were predominant in his behavior. Vicente loved everyone. He learned that he was going to die several days before his death, but he did not allow his friends to be informed because he did not want to share their sadness. Vicente wanted to be remembered as a happy man and we will remember him as such a man.
Giorgio Zgrablich Universidad Nacional de San Luis, Argentina Wladyslaw Rudzin ´ ski Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland LA962110I
© 1997 American Chemical Society
