Historic Trailblazers

Oswaldo Luiz Alves Oswaldo Luiz Alves was among the first Brazilian scientists to develop, research, and teach nanotechnology. He worked at the Laboratory of Synthesis of Nanostructures and Interaction with Biosystems, and he founded the Solid State Chemistry Laboratory at the University of Campinas, where he was a professor of chemistry. Alves was born in São Paulo and was drawn to chemistry during after-school science camps in his adolescence. With a state fellowship, Alves took technical industrial chemistry courses and then finished his bachelor’s in industrial chemistry in 1973 at the public University of Campinas. At the same time that he began his doctorate at the university, he was hired there as a professor. But when he did his postgraduate studies in France, he “got contaminated,” as he called it, with solid-state chemistry. He then took this knowledge back to Brazil to found a solid-state chemistry laboratory. There he researched