Sotero Prieto Rodríguez

Sotero Prieto Rodríguez (December 25, 1884 – May 22, 1935) was a Mexican mathematician who taught at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Among his students were physicist Manuel Sandoval Vallarta, physicist and mathematician Carlos Graef Fernández, and engineer and Rector of UNAM Nabor Carrillo Flores.

Early life Sotero Prieto Rodríguez was the son of the mining engineer and mathematics teacher Raúl Prieto González Bango and Teresa Rodríguez de Prieto.

He was a teacher of Manuel Sandoval Vallarta in the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria and of Alberto Barajas Celis, Carlos Graef Fernández and of Nabor Carrillo Flores in the Escuela Nacional de Ingenieros, currently the Facultad de Ingeniería.

In 1932, he established the Mathematics Section of the Sociedad Científica "Antonio Alzate", currently the Academia Nacional de Ciencias de México, where his students presented the results of their research.

Death According to some close people, it was said that Prieto had expressed judgement that if he passed fifty years of age without having achieved some great discovery in his specialty, he would commit suicide, a statement which no-one took seriously. However, at midday of May 22, 1935 in house number 2 of Génova Street, Mexico City, when he was alone, he tragically fulfilled the promise that he had made himself. However, according to his family, the reasons for his suicide were others.