The physicist Jorge Dias de Deus, full professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, died this Monday at the age of 79, but leaves a scientific legacy that will perpetuate his name. His knowledge, brilliance, broad and multidisciplinary perspectives of the world are recognised by his colleagues and students. Besides being a multifaceted professor and a brilliant physicist, he was also an active disseminator of scientific knowledge and an inspiring person.
His friends – and he had so many – called him DD. Among his many qualities, his friends highlight his intelligence, the acute sense of humor, the ability to socialise, as well as to think and imagine the future.
“Professor Jorge Dias de Deus was a brilliant and remarkable professor, in all aspects: scientific, pedagogical, cultural, ethical and human”, says the Técnico president, professor Rogério Colaço. “He was an example to us all: disciples, colleagues and friends”, he adds. “It is with deep sadness that we learned of the death of professor Jorge Dias de Deus, who was president of Técnico and who has dedicated so much of his life to the school”.
Jorge Dias de Deus was born in Vila Fernando (municipality of Elvas). He got a degree in Chemical Engineering from Técnico. While he was still a student, he was elected president of AEIST in 1963/64, during the Portuguese dictatorship.
He did his PhD at the Imperial College London and then he went to Copenhagen, to further deepen his knowledge in particle physics. “In 1973, while he was in Copenhagen, he developed the idea of geometric scaling which gave new insight into the scaling laws for the partons, i.e., quarks and gluons, the main constituents of the protons and neutrons”, recalls José Sande Lemos, Técnico professor at the Department of Physics (DF) and president of the Center for Astrophysics and Gravitation (CENTRA).
He returned to Portugal a few years later. Professor José Sande Lemos joined Técnico in 1996 guided by the influence of professor Jorge Dias de Deus, who was Head of the Department of Physics at the time. “I studied Physics in Rio de Janeiro and Cambridge, and I had the luck of being invited several times by professors Ana Mourão and José Mourão in 1992 to teach at Técnico. Jorge Dias de Deus was leading this research group that was being set up and liked my work. In 1996, I was hired by the Department of Physics”, he recalls.
“Professor Jorge Dias de Deus was very active, he had a lot of ideas and he wanted to innovate. He tried to grasp the deep mysteries of Physics, for example, what is the conceptual level at which the electromagnetic, strong and weak interactions between elementary particles must be unified”, shares professor José Sande Lemos.
“He enjoyed exploring and disseminating Physics”
Mário Pimenta, Técnico professor and president of the Laboratory of Instrumentation and Experimental Particle Physics (LIP), was still a Técnico student when he met professor Jorge Dias de Deus. He remembers quite well the first conversation he had with him, and how it would be a harbinger of their relationship. “Dias de Deus was one of the first people that professor Mariano Gago tried to attract to the Department of Physics”, recalls the president of LIP.
“When I started to work with professor Mariano Gago, once I didn’t have a training in Physics – I had a degree in electrical engineering, he told me that he would guide me in the experimental work and Jorge Dias de Deus would guide me in the theoretical work. Professor Mariano Gago gave me books to study and DD gave me scientific articles”, says the president of LIP.
One of those times, professor Jorge Dias de Deus handed him an article with experimental data and challenged him to make a model together. “I took the article home and started doing some combinatorics. Some time later I came to CERN and left them on my desk at IFM [Institute of Physics and Mathematics]. A short time later, I received an envelope with my combinatronics transformed into a scientific article that he had written. It was my first scientific article in 1981”, says professor Mário Pimenta.
“The last article I published with Dias de Deus was about phenomenology, in 2010 or 2011. It was one of the things I enjoyed doing”, recalls the president of LIP. “He enjoyed the challenge of being confronted with something that no one understood and he tried to explain using few parameters of a model. He enjoyed exploring and disseminating Physics. There were few theorists in Portugal who saw Physics as an experimental science. He focused his attention on experimental results, which was his main challenge. Dias de Deus loved to talk and socialize, he was always available to hear the most abstruse ideas”, he adds.
The decisive contribution of professor Jorge Dias de Deus to the Department of Physics
Professor Jorge Dias de Deus served two mandates as president of the DF: 1987-1989 and 1995-1998.
Professor Vítor Cardoso, current president of the DF, stresses: “Professor Dias de Deus is a fundamental part of the Department of Physics, of Técnico and of our country. He left us the foundations of science in all aspects, the curiosity for knowledge, the humanistic perspective to question and to try to understand the world”, says the president of DF.
“It is rare to meet someone larger than life, but DD was certainly one of those people. Fortunately, the seeds of science that he planted germinated very well. Today’s society understands and recognises the benefits of science, which is largely due to his talent and passion for Physics”, adds professor Vítor Cardoso.
The idea of creating Engineering Physics, Aerospace Engineering and Biomedical Engineering courses at Técnico came from professor Jorge Dias de Deus. He was president of Técnico from 1991 to 1992.
A versatile and multifaceted physicist
In 1994, professor Jorge Dias de Deus created the Center for Astrophysics and Gravitation (CENTRA), which he chaired for several years. Ana Mourão, Técnico professor at the DF and co-founder of the research center, recalls that the initial name of CENTRA included the word “multidisciplinarity” – Multidisciplinary Center for Astrophysics – and highlights “professor Jorge Dias de Deus liked multidisciplinarity. He showed multidisciplinarity in many areas”.
“Although he was a particle physicist, he realised that the future was in astrophysics, gravitation and cosmology. He then started to set up an interdisciplinary group, which would become a center to study these fields”, says professor José Sande Lemos.
CENTRA is a highly prestigious research center involved in large astrophysics projects. “Time has shown that he was 100% right”, stresses professor José Sande Lemos. “This scientific field receives a Nobel Prize almost every two years. The last one was in 2020 for black holes”.
In 2011, CENTRA honoured its founder with a conference that celebrated the 70th anniversary of Jorge Dias de Deus. This year, on 6th March, the 50 members will meet “to evoke and to thank the work developed by Jorge Dias de Deus in CENTRA”, shares professor José Sande Lemos.
The role of scientific dissemination in education
Besides his brilliant scientific career, Jorge Dias de Deus dedicated part of his life to the dissemination of Physics by lecturing and writing books.
Teresa Peña, Técnico professor at the DF and DECN (Department of Engineering and Nuclear Sciences) and current president of the Pedagogical Council (CP), became aware of his knowledge through his book ‘Ciência, Curiosidade e Maldição’ (‘Science, Curiosity and Curse’). “I read it when I was doing my PhD,” she recalls. “In this book, DD shows that Science, through Technology and Engineering, is never neutral. The book exposes the profound contradiction of science, in particular the impact of technology in everyone’s life”, highlights professor Teresa Peña.
The Técnico professor quotes some parts of the book that she considers to be current issues: “Science solves human problems and creates human problems: ‘it is the good fairy (…) on the other hand, (…) it is the bad fairy (..) that manipulates, corrupts, destroys’”. “For example, the digital revolution in physics is amazing. It is much more revolutionary than the invention of the Gutenberg Press was, but it also brings a curse. For example, the online deception in social media, there are people who have been deceived through the use of social media in terms of decision making, in electoral processes. This things show that justice or ethics cannot be separated from science. I realised this very early when I read this book”, highlights professor Teresa Peña.
She met professor Jorge Dias de Deus later on, and they ended up writing 2 books, Physics dissemination texts for “Gazeta de Física” and the Portuguese Physics Society magazine, and a scientific article. “We also made physics videos for RTP2”, recalls the Técnico professor.
Professor Teresa Peña recalled when DD challenged her to write the book “Einstein, Albert Einstein” (Einstein seen as the James Bond of Physics). The centenary of Albert Einstein’s annus mirabilis was celebrated in that year.
Before that, they had already written the textbook “Introduction to Physics” together. “DD brought together very different people, Mário Pimenta, Pedro Brogueira, Ana Noronha and me, to prepare this book to be used in Computer Engineering course. “I took a summary of the book and its guidelines to a European meeting and I was asked to be part of an international team to write a book on Nuclear Physics: ‘Nucleus: A trip into the heart of matter’, published by Johns Hopkins. My work with DD had multiplicative effects”, points out the professor.
“Working with DD was a joy, it was not work. Freedom and imagination were the basic principles of collaboration with him”. According to professor Teresa Peña, the most inspiring lesson from him was: “’The struggle continues’. In failure and success. Never give up, never stop trying”.
