Date of appointment: 27 september 2000.
By proposal of: Faculty of Physics.
Date of investiture: 6 april 2001.
Sponsor: D. Antonio Pich Zardoya and D. José Miguel Bolta Alandete.
Joaquín Catalá joined the University of Valencia in the forties. Together with a very reduced group of collaborators founded the Corpuscular Physics Institute, that, over the years, has become, in Catalá's words, “the pride of this university and the Superior Council of Scientific Researchs”. Catalá has been an important pillar in the creation of the current Faculty of Physics. This discipline was considered little less than marginal within the Faculty of Physics in the forties and fifties.