Manuel Sadosky


Manuel Sadosky was an Argentine mathematician, civil servant and author who was born in Buenos Aires to Jewish Russian immigrants who had fled the pogroms in Europe.

Education

Sadosky graduated as a Doctor in Physics and Mathematics at the University of Buenos Aires in 1940, under supervision of Esteban Terradas. He then moved to the Henri Poincaré Institute in Paris to pursue postdoctoral studies on a scholarship granted by the French Government. After another year in Italy, he returned to Argentina, where he faced complicated employment options because of his opposition to the Peronist regime.
After a coup d'état of 1955 removed President Juan Perón from office, Sadosky took up a position as professor at the University of Buenos Aires, where he was vice-dean of the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences from 1957 to 1966.

Computational Institute

In 1960 he was commissioned to develop the Computational Institute of the university, home of Clementina, a new Ferranti Mercury computer and the first one installed in Argentina for research and education. His staff there included several excellent mathematicians including Cecilia Berdichevsky and Rebeca Cherep de Guber, and both would work closely with him for many years to come.
He directed the institute until another coup d'état installed a military dictatorship in 1966, causing him to resign with the rest of the faculty in opposition to government intervention in the hitherto autonomous state universities and flee the country.

In exile

He was later able to return to Argentina, but the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance death squad threatened to kill him so he fled with his family in 1974. He moved to Uruguay, finding employment in Montevideo at the Universidad de la República, where he continued publishing, helped to initiate computer studies and introduced the first research computer in that country.
With the eventual return of democracy to Argentina in 1983, president Raúl Alfonsín appointed him as Secretary of State of Science and Technology.
One of his major contributions to computer science during this period, was the creation of the ESLAI.

Later years

Dr. Manuel Sadosky died in Buenos Aires on June 18, 2005.
He was named an Illustrious Citizen of the City of Buenos Aires.
The Computer Science Department of the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires is named after him.

Selected publications