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Esteban Terrades i Illa (15 September 1883, inBarcelona – 9 May 1950, inMadrid) also known asEsteve Terradas, was aSpanishmathematician,scientist andengineer. He researched and taught widely in the fields ofmathematics and thephysical sciences, working not only in his nativeCatalonia, but also in the rest ofSpain and inSouth America. He was also active as a consultant in the Spanishaeronautics,electric power,telephone andrailwayindustries.
He held twodoctorates (in mathematics andphysics) on 1904, as well as two degrees inengineering, from theETSEIB school. He wasprofessor ofmathematical analysis (teachingdifferential equations) and later ofmathematical physics atBarcelona Central University. He also taughtacoustics,optics,electricity,magnetism andclassical mechanics at theUniversity of Barcelona, teaching mechanics also at theUniversity of Zaragoza,University of Buenos Aires and theUniversity of La Plata (Argentina) andMontevideo (Uruguay). He was a Member of theRoyal Academy of the Spanish Language and active in theRoyal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences and theRoyal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona. He was grantedhonorary doctorates by the Universities of Buenos Aires,University of Santiago (Chile) andUniversity of Toulouse (France) and established as an honorary member of theRoyal Academy of Medicine of Barcelona, the Association of Argentine Engineers, and of the Society of Engineers ofPeru among many other honors. He was an Invited Speaker at theICM in 1912 in Cambridge, England.[1]
He studied atCharlottenburg inBerlin, Barcelona and Madrid. Known as an exceptional student, entered the University in 1898, when was only 15 years old. He held professorships in the universities of Zaragoza, Barcelona and Madrid, specializing in physical and mathematical sciences and publishing numerous articles about those subjects. In 1909, while at the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona, he produced an important work entitledEmisión de radiaciones por cuerpos fijos o en movimiento.
Histeaching and pedagogical activity was also important. He published articles in the "Revista de la Academia de Ciencias" in Madrid, and in the bulletin of theInstitute of Sciences of Barcelona. He set up a physics-mathematicsseminar, to which he brought some of the best regarded scientists of his time. He became a founding member of the Sciences Section of theInstitute of Catalan Studies in 1911, within the framework of theMonographic Courses of High Studies of Exchange promoted by theCommonwealth of Catalonia. He also participated in theMinerva Collection, where he published "Theradium". In 1919 set up theInstitute of Electricity and Applied Mechanics and was its director; he was also a teacher of the section ofelectrotechnics of theEscola del Treball.
He was interested inphotography, a new practice in the early 20th century, using it to illustrate his technical and scientific works as well as his personal life.
The theories ofquanta andrelativity captivated him, and he invited such figures asJacques Hadamard (1921),Hermann Weyl (1921),Arnold Sommerfeld (1922),Tullio Levi-Civita (1922) andAlbert Einstein (1923) to Barcelona. Einstein's Spanish visit, between 22 and 28 February 1923, was a notable success, organized by Terradas, the Catalan Government, theMancomunitat, andRafael Campalans. Terradas was also the driving force behind a series of scientificmonographs that were a compilation of these lectures, his own and the works of others (includingJulio Palacios,Julio Rey Pastor andJacques Hadamard), published by the Institute of Catalan Studies under the title "Physics and Mathematics Courses".
He lectured at several universities in South America: in Buenos Aires andRio de la Plata (Uruguay) from 1936 to 39. Terradas was the first professor to hold the chair in Differential Equation when it was first established in Madrid in 1932.
On 1918, Terrades was chosen to drive theXarxa de Ferrocarrils Secundaris de Catalunya (Secondary Net of Catalan Railways), intended to decentralize Catalonia, but was never completed due to thedictatorship ofPrimo de Rivera being established on 13 September 1923.
He was a technical director of the Commonwealth of Catalonia railways, he directed (1923–25) and projected the construction of theTransversal Metropolitan Railway of Barcelona and other Catalan railway lines.
It is said that the President of the Commonwealth of Catalonia,Josep Puig i Cadafalch, entrusted him a study about the stability of the turn of plain brick, known as the "Catalan turn", which is kept at the archive of the Institute of Catalan Studies.
From 1940 onwards he worked for the SpanishInstituto Nacional de Industria, becoming one of the top consultants of the Spanish industrial development along the 40s. He specially was involved in the planning and design of the power plants built byEndesa by that time. He worked too at the CompañíaTelefónica Nacional de España and served as a member of theSpanish National Research Council.
In 1942 he created the SpanishInstituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial / INTA (National Institute of the Aerospace Technology), that after Terrade's death received his name. As INTA chairman, Terrades maintained along the late forties a sustained and fruitful professional relationship withTheodore von Karman.
In (1910) he published "Discrete elements of matter and radiation", "Corrientes marinas" (1941) and, to gain entry to the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, the volume "Neologismos, arcanismos in plàtica de ingenieros" (1946). As anencyclopedist, he authored several articles in theEspasa Encyclopedia, including those onCelestial Mechanics, theMoon andrelativity.
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