April 2019

Meeting with College colleagues of the class of 1969 at the University of Valladolid

Classmates at 'Palacio de Santa Cruz' court yard at University of Valladolid
View along the diagonal ‘mirror plane’ of the group of classmates, colleagues and friends that congregated at the ‘Palacio de Santa Cruz’ court yard to celebrate the 50th anniversary of our college graduation. Valladolid, Spain, April 26.2019.

This year we celebrated the 50th anniversary of our graduation from the University of Valladolid, Faculty of Physics. A group of classmates met at the ‘Colegio de Santa Cruz’ (Valladolid, Spain) on April 26th for a brief academic act, in the presence of the university Rector and the Dean of the Faculty of Sciences. It was a unique opportunity for friends, colleagues and classmates to get together and reminisce about those unique years. We were members of the first generations of young men and women who reached maturity in the early 1960’s, nearly two decades after the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Most of us came from modest or middle class families, and were able to attend the university classrooms thanks to scholarships. I was the only one that had left Spain after my college graduation and my colleagues honored me by asking me to give a lecture related to what I had been doing during these fifty years. I chose to highlight the fact that the courtyard of the ‘Colegio de Santa Cruz’, where we were standing, had a striking 4mm symmetry, to present a lecture entitled ‘The use and meaning of Symmetry: from the ‘Colegio de Santa Cruz’ to Macromolecular Crystals‘.

'Palacio de Santa Cruz' court yard at University of ValladolidThe content of the lecture can be downloaded from (Meaning-Of-Symmetry-CAZ-50years.pdf). A group photo (above) was taken down a view emphasizing the one of the mirror planes of the courtyard (diagonal).
We had time to socialize during an informal dinner the night prior to the event and also during a formal luncheon (‘comida’ in the Spanish style) after the academic event.

I returned to the US April 30,, after a few days in Madrid with Victoria, full of memories, images and anecdotes from those golden and irreproducible years.
Below: A more encompassing view of the court yard of the College, dating from 1492, the year that Columbus sailed across the Atlantic. The mirror symmetry (left-right) should be clear from the repetition of the decorations on both sides. Consult the content of the lecture for more details.