IYOG 2022
� Participants of the CeRTEV’s Advanced International Glass and Glass Ceramic School in 2015.
Glass Science in Brazil G
lass research in Brazil is relatively young, but quite vigorous. According to the database of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) [1], academic research is distributed mainly in public universities and research institutes located in the southeast and south part of the country with a few, but important, exceptions in the northeast. The state of São Paulo leads the efforts and hosts 33% of the most prolific research groups, followed by the states of Minas Gerais, Paraná, Pernambuco, Alagoas, and others. Inland São Paulo state, a strong cluster within a radius of less than 100 km, is formed by different units at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), at the University of São Paulo (USP) in São Carlos and in Ribeirão Preto, and at the São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Araraquara. In the state capital, there are groups at the Technology College FATEC, and at the
research institutes IPEN and IPT. Furthermore, the state also hosts the largest and most important glass industries in the country with production ranging from kitchenware and construction materials to technological glasses and glass ceramics (Fig 1). The beginning of Brazilian glass research dates back to 1973 when Aldo Felix Craievich relocated from the University of Cordoba in Argentina and became a faculty member at the Institute of Physics and Chemistry of USP in São Carlos. In 1975 he published the first two papers on the phase transformation of lead aluminoborate glasses. In 1981, after having moved to the Brazilian Center of Physical Research (CBPF), he published the first theoretical paper based on dynamic scaling in the same glass system. Following the footsteps of Craievich, his disciple, Edgar Dutra Zanotto was the first scientist to introduce research on crystal nucleation in glasses in Brazil, in
1977. To date he remains the most prolific researcher in the area. He created the Laboratory of Vitreous Materials (LaMaV) at UFSCar, even before he completed his PhD with Peter F. James in Sheffield, UK, in 1982. In 2001, alongside his colleague Oscar Peitl, they published a highly cited (> 400) manuscript with Larry Hench - the inventor of bioglasses, and since then LaMaV became an international reference group in that area. The 1970‘s were favourable years for scientific research in Brazil, when many important academic institutions such as UFSCar were established. It was in that university that the first undergraduate curriculum on Materials Engineering in Latin America, was introduced. Over the 1980’s and 90’s highly motivated scientists such as Luiz Carlos Barbosa, Sidney José Lima Ribeiro, Cid Bartolomeu de Araújo, Mauro Luciano Baesso, Younès Continued>>
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In the International Year of Glass, Andrea Simone Stucchi de Camargo* discusses some of the developments that have taken place in glass science and explains how we are on the threshold of an exciting decade of research.
39 Glass International March 2022
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