Tsallis Constantino

Constantino Tsallis was born in Athens-Greece in 1943. His family moved to Argentina when he was a small child. Educated there, he then moved to France, where he concluded a Doctorat d’Etat in Physics at the University of Paris. Finally, in his thirties, he moved to Brazil, where he lives since then, being Professor at the Brazilian Center for Research in Physics. Married, he is the father of three children. Fluent in six languages, the focus of his research has been statistical mechanics, its foundations and applications: critical phenomena, biogenesis, chaos, immunology, economics, cognitive psychology. His most original contribution (1988) has been the generalization – nonextensive statistical mechanics -- of the Boltzmann-Gibbs theory, addressing nonequilibrium complex systems, typically nonergodic, living ones, as opposed to inert matter. This idea responds for most of his over 8000 citations (over 1600 of the 1988 paper) of his about 300 papers. Member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Economical, Political and Social Sciences of Brazil, Doctor Honoris Causa of several Universities (Cordoba-Argentina, Rio Grande do Norte, and Maringa-Brazil). Honorary Citizen of the Rio de Janeiro Sate, recipient of the Mexico Prize of Science and Technology, a most prestigious one in Latin America, Portugal and Spain, received in hands from the President of Mexico. The President of Brazil awarded Tsallis the National Order of Scientific Merit, and the Rio Branco Order. Chief Co-editor of Physica A/Elsevier, he supervised 35 Master and Doctor Thesis, and made long visits to Oxford University, Cornell University, MIT. External Professor of the Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico, he co-authored several papers with the Nobel laureate Gell-Mann, who predicted the quarks. Head of the Theoretical Physics Department during many years, Co-Director of the International School of Complexity – Erice, recipient of the Latin America Award of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs. He delivered 800 invited lectures around the world. The current bibliography addressing nonextensive statistical mechanics (http://tsallis.cat.cbpf.br/biblio.htm) contains over 2400 articles by 1900 scientists of 62 countries.