Carlos Graef Fernández

Carlos Graef Fernández (February 25, 1911 – January 13, 1988) was a Mexican physicist and mathematician. A graduate of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he was a founding member of the Mexican Mathematical Society and the Mexican Physical Society. He helped to establish the Tonantzintla Observatory and he later directed it. He received the National Prize for Arts and Sciences in 1970.

Biography Graef Fernández was born in Guanaceví, Durango, where his father was a mining engineer. He had two younger siblings; his brother Hermann became an accomplished physician. in the German city of Darmstadt for a couple of years before returning to Mexico. He completed his undergraduate education at UNAM, and he was influenced by UNAM scientists Manuel Sandoval Vallarta and Sotero Prieto, who each mentored several successful Mexican scientists.

Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and other assistance, including a stipend awarded by Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas, Graef Fernández went to MIT. In The Skin of the Sky, Graef Fernández is described as "small, round and prone to a cordiality that made him lovable"; he seemed an unlikely partner for Erro, who was a slender, elegant man with a hearing aid.

Ultimately, Graef Fernández was more interested in studying gravitational issues than astrophysics, so he sought an academic position. He joined the UNAM faculty, where he directed the Institute of Physics and the Faculty of Sciences. He was also a founding member of the Mexican Physical Society in 1951. The society awards the Carlos Graef Fernández Prize. He was awarded the National Prize for Arts and Sciences in 1970. He was made an emeritus professor at UNAM in 1974 and died in 1988.