Some years of studies in electrical engineering at the School of Engineering convinced me that my road laid elsewhere. In fact, I discovered the charms of mathematics, thanks to an excellent teacher, don Domingo Almendras. I quitted this school in 1957 to pursue studies in mathematics and philosophy at the same university (Instituto Pedagógico and Centro de Investigaciones Matemáticas, an organism that had just been created). After the Purgatory of the Escuela de Ingenieria, I had finally entered the heavenly realm of passionate studies and discussions…and of the bohemia, rite of passage obligatory for the intelligentsia of the country. In 1961, I received the diploma of Licenciado en Matematicas con Distincion Unanime, the third purely academic degree delivered in mathematics in Chile. If truth should be told, this degree was not a professional degree, nobody knew what was good for and I remember the sadness of my family when I got it.
After obtaining a Fullbright scholarship, I left for the University of Calfifornia at Berkeley in 1961, where I studied mathematics and philosophy, obtaining the Ph.D. in Logic and Methodology of Sciences in 1967. I must confess that in spite the aura that this university had obtained as the Mecca of logic at the time, and the richeness and confusion of the 60’s that marked me for the rest of my life, I found the years spent at Berkeley rather painful. Compared to Santiago in that period, San Francisco cut a figure of a poor relative. I had met Allen Ginsberg in Santiago and I had made myself a grandiose idea of the cultural and bohemian life that I would enjoy in that city…
My stay in Berkeley left me with but one certitude: I did not want to remain in the States. But I did not want to return immediately to Santiago as I thought that I could not continue there the researches opened up by my thesis. In the middle of these existential problems, I had the good fortune of receiving an invitation as research assistant in the department of mathematics of the Université de Montréal. I arrived at Montreral just in time to see the last days of Expo 67, the year that Montréal opened up to the world. The rest is an “histoire d’amour” with a fascinating, multicultural city and an amazing young lady who became my wife, the mother of Luis-Emilio and the grandmother of Carl-Emil. But this is another story. After all these years, the loop was finally closed: I had returned to Latin America, to this Quebec which, dazzled as it is by the United States and France, has turned his back on this latin american reality. A reality so much decried, but that has been at the vanguard in several domains and that has given us a literature celebrated in the whole world.
All my career took place at the Université de Montréal: assistant professor (68-73), associate professor (73-79), full professor (79-2002, year of my retirement). I am thankful to the university for the intellectual freedom that I enjoyed and that allowed me to follow a variety of subjects, as the page of publications shows, either in Montreal itself or in different places throughout the world, during my sabbatical years or extended visits.
At present, I continue my studies in mathematics, specially Synthetic Differential Geometry and I started some studies in physics (Relativity), thus renewing with some of the first loves of my youth.
Version française: