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We decided to honor Mário Schenberg by naming the Institute with his name because we saw him as an iconic model to follow
Schenberg was a Brazilian scientist who contributed to the advancement of physics and mathematics through his research. He also fought for Brazil’s development by defending the country’s economic interests and promoting science to the population. However, he was targeted and forced to leave his academic career for political reasons. Today, even though his contributions are recognized around the world, he’s a name that most Brazilians don’t know. Mário Schenberg’s story shows what he believed.
“We’ve got to create a certain intellectual climate in the country. Scientific research will definitely change the way people think. This will allow for more objective thinking, more realistic than the fantastical thinking that currently guides the Brazilian administration.”
(SCHENBERG, Mário. Formação da mentalidade científica. Estudos Avançados, v. 5, p. 123-151, 1991. pp. 130)
From now on, we’ll talk about some of Mário Schenberg’s contributions to the history of science and Brazil.
Mário Schenberg was a big-time contributor to the scientific community, especially in the fields of physics, astrophysics, and mathematics. He made many contributions, some of which have become more well-known because of the impact they had on these fields.
The first of these was the Urca process, which he proposed together with George Gamow in 1940. Both of them knew that a star had to first collapse gravitationally for it to explode in a supernova, wich seemed impossible because the electrons formed an incompressible crystal. They proposed that the electrons would be absorbed by protons (the opposite process to beta decay), generating neutrons and emitting neutrinos. The supernova 1987A explosion in the nearby Magellanic Cloud galaxy happened while there were already neutrino observatories, and they showed that the predictions of the Urca process were accurate. Another crucial work for stellar astrophysics was published by Schenberg and Chandrasekhar in 1942. It was called the Schenberg-Chandrasekar Criterion. Before this work, it was thought that stars could fuse Hydrogen (H) into Helium (He) without stopping until the entire mass of H in the star had been burned up. For the Sun, this would take it to the order of 100 billion years, which was astonishing, given that the age of the Universe was thought to be only a few billion years. If that were true, all the stars that were born in the Universe would still be very young. Mário Schenberg used a simple slide rule (since computers weren’t around yet) to make thousands of calculations. He
showed that a star can’t keep burning hydrogen in its core once it’s used up 10% of it. For the Sun, this would mean that the main phase of its life would only last 10 billion years. As the Earth is less than 5 billion years old, it could be argued that the Sun is halfway through its life. Schenberg’s contribution to quantum mathematics should also be highlighted. wo of his propositions were later taken up by other researchers, impacting the way quantum processes are understood.
One of his propositions were later taken up by other researchers, impacting the way quantum processes are understood. One of these contributions was his 1958 proposal to add a new idempotent operator to the Heisenberg algebra. The British physicist Basil Hiley took up this proposal in the (19)80s by working on the modified Heisenberg algebra. This contribution allowed a new approach to the quantum uncertainty problems proposed by Heisenberg and Schrödinger. Another contribution in this field was the proposal to subordinate gravitation to the electromagnetic model, an innovative approach to Einstein’s propositions on the relationship between these two phenomena, placing electromagnetism in a privileged position as a factor for measuring natural phenomena. This contribution was recognized by Professor F. Hehl of the University of Cologne in Germany between the late 1990s and early 2000s. Schenberg’s discoveries undoubtedly place him among the great thinkers of Brazil and humanity.
As well as contributing to advances in basic science, Schenberg was a key figure in the struggle to change the relationship between Brazil’s public administration and the country’s technical and scientific development. His work led him to be elected State Representative in São Paulo twice. The first time, in 1948, for the Constituent Assembly of the State of São Paulo, as a representative of the PCB; the second time, in 1962, for the Assembly of the State of São Paulo, as a representative of the PTB. On both occasions his work was the target of political persecution. Schenberg’s political life had two main focus. The first was to defend the interests of the Brazilian people over the country’s
energy resources. He acted in defence of the “O Petróleo é Nosso” (The Oil is Ours) campaign in 1948. He was critical of the Brazil-Germany Nuclear Agreement in 1974, which he believed it would not benefit the population and entail risks, especially with large nuclear reactors. He also helped approve a research fund in 1948 that led to the creation of the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). He cared about science and technology and was a steadfast defender of Brazilian democracy, believing that the Brazilian state should act in defense of the general interests of the people.
Mário Schenberg‘s political actions in favor of science and the Brazilian people earned him a fierce persecution that would lead to the virtual erasure of his real value in the history of our country. This persecution started in 1948. That year, the Brazilian Communist Party was dissolved, and all its elected representatives were stripped of their mandates. Schenberg, who was a professor at the University of São Paulo (USP) and a member of the São Paulo State Constituent Assembly at the time, was harassed. By then, the government was monitoring trade unions and throwing anyone accused of communism in jail. When he got Professor Occhialini’s offer to work in Brussels, he accepted it and used his leave and a request to change his vacation. The then-president of the University of São Paulo didn’t agree with the Faculty’s congregation’s decisions. He decided to expel him from the staff instead of granting his request. He only went back to Brazil in 1953, when Getúlio Vargas was in power, and soon became the head of the Physics Department at USP’s Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters. He would only leave his position as dean in 1961, in preparation for the 1962 election. This time, he wasn’t even in office. They took away his diploma because they said he was a communist, even though he ran for the PTB. In the following years, he devoted himself to his Quantum Mechanics course at USP. On April 2, 1964, the day after the military coup, Mário
Schenberg was arrested, resulting in the interruption of his course. Schenberg was imprisoned for fifty days, only to be released as his health worsened and thanks to strong international pressure from renowned scientists. Between 1964 and 1965, he had to fight in court to be able to fully exercise his position as a professor at USP. In 1968, with Institutional Act No. 5 (AI-5), the military dictatorship again targeted Schenberg. In April 1969, he was retired compulsorily from USP. In October, he was banned from working at other public or government-sponsored institutions under Complementary Act 75. It wasn’t until the Amnesty Law of 1979 that he was allowed back into academic life and reinstated at USP. During this time, Schenberg was not only the target of persecution from those in political power. He was defamed and faced persecution and from members of academia who, out of ambition or envy, sought to prevent him from pursuing his brilliant career as a scientist. He started working as an art critic to support himself and to find meaning in life. This time, his creativity and ability to freely interpret also earned him recognition from the community. He was even honored by the Casa das Rosas digital museum with the exhibition “The World of Mário Schenberg” in 1995. They recognized his contributions and encouragement to the artistic world.
Sources:
SCHENBERG, Mário. Formação da mentalidade científica. Estudos Avançados, v. 5, p. 123-151, 1991. pp. 130
SOUZA, Aroldo Quinto de et al. A visão de ciência de Mário Schenberg: intuição e imaginação nas origens das ideias científicas. Dissertação de Mestrado, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo: 2012.
REVISTA TRANS/FORM/AÇÃO. Entrevista: Mário Schenberg. São Paulo: Revista Trans/Form/Ação, n3, pp. 9-62, 1980.
Sources for Reading:
Autor: José Luiz Goldfarb