Date of appointment: 2 july 1987.
By proposal of: Faculty of Chemistry.
Date of investiture: 7 march 1988.
Sponsor: Dr. Francisco Tomás Vert and Dr. Agustín Escardino Benlloch.
José Ignacio Fernández Alonso was born in Ferrol in 1917. Professor of Chemistry.
He studied chemistry at the University of Santiago, where he graduated in 1940, and obtained his doctorate in 1944.
In 1945 he joined the University of Valencia as Professor of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry, and remained until 1971, from where he moved to the chair with the same name at the Autonomous University of Madrid, where he ended his academic life as professor emeritus.
His teaching task was always combined with intense scientific activity. In 1951 he joined as a Research Fellow at CALTECH (California Institute of Technology) where he collaborated with Professor Linus Pauling. It is from this date that Fernández Alonso introduces in Spain, through the Universitat de València, the new science of Quantum Chemistry.
The innovative and restless spirit of Professor Fernández Alonso led him to the introduction of computer science at the Universitat de València, through the acquisition of the first computing computer of the Spanish University, in 1965. During his university cover in Valencia, he participated in several occasions, in stays in the Center of Mecanique Ondulatoire Appliquée of the CNRS in Paris.
In 1971 he moved to the Autonomous University of Madrid, where he pursues his teaching task, expanding his research activity in the Department of Physics and Quantum Chemistry that he directed from its inception to the culmination of his academic life.
