Cardona was born inBarcelona, Spain in 1934.[1] After obtaining a Masters in physics in 1955 fromUniversity of Barcelona Cardona was awarded a fellowship to work as a graduate student atHarvard University starting in 1956.[4] At Harvard he began investigations of the dielectric properties of semiconductors, in particular germanium and silicon. With this work as a thesis he received a PhD in Applied Physics at Harvard. From 1959 till 1961 he continued similar work on III-V semiconductors at the RCA Laboratories in Zurich, Switzerland.[4] In 1961 he moved to theRCA Labs inPrinceton, NJ, where he continued work on the optical properties of semiconductors and started investigations of the microwave properties of superconductors. In 1964 he became a member of the Physics Faculty ofBrown University (Providence, RI).[4] In June–September 1965 he taught at the University of Buenos Aires under the auspices of the Ford Foundation. In 1971 he moved to Stuttgart, Germany as a founding director of the then-recently createdMax Planck Institute for Solid State Research.[5] Concomitantly he became scientific Member of theMax Planck Society, where he became emeritus in 2000.[5]
Cardona has authored over 1,300 scientific publications in international journals, ten monographs on solid state physics and co-authored a textbook on semiconductors.[1] Since 1972, Cardona has served on the Board of Editors of at least seven journals,[1] including being the Editor-in-Chief ofSolid State Communications from 1992 to 2005.[1]
Some of his works include:
Manuel Cardona: Modulation Spectroscopy, Academic Press 1969. Lib of Congress 55-12299
Manuel Cardona, Gernot Günterodt and Roberto Merlin: Light Scattering in Solids I-IX (nine volumes) Springer Verlag;ISBN3-540-11513-7
Pere Bonnin: Manuel Cardona i Castro, Fundació Catalana per a la Recerca, Barcelona 1998ISBN84-89570-18-3
Peter Y. Yu and Manuel Cardona, Fundamentals of semiconductors, 4 editions 1996-2000,ISBN978-3-642-00709-5
Cardona died inStuttgart on 2 July 2014,[9] where he lived since 1971 with his wife Inge Cardona (née Hecht). He held American, German and Spanish citizenship and had 3 children[1] and 7 grandchildren.
