"When I was finishing high school I was looking for the most challenging career, something that few dare to follow. Physics was the only answer."

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Hernán Makse

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1966
Licenciatura in Physics

Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1991

Ph.D. in Physics

Boston University, 1996

Postdoctoral Fellow in Petrophysics

Schlumberger-Doll Research, Ridgefield, Connecticut

I always had an interest in math and physics. When I was finishing high school I was looking for the most challenging career, something that few dare to follow. Physics was the only answer.

After finishing college I worked as a research assistant at the Atomic Energy Commission in Buenos Aires before moving to Boston to begin my Ph.D. studies. My postdoctoral period was shared between two laboratories: that of 1991 Nobel laureate Professor P.G. de Gennes at College de France in Paris, and Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, UK, where I worked with Professor R. C. Ball.

I am currently a postdoctoral fellow in petrophysics at the Schlumberger-Doll Research Center in Ridgefield, Connecticut, where I work in the Reservoir Definition/Evaluation Program.

How did I get interested in sand? Jorge Luis Borges illuminated me: In his Book of Sand (1977), he wrote about the obscure limits between the infinite and infinitesimal: "He told me his book was called the Book of Sand, because neither the sand nor the book has any beginning or end."

My hobbies and interests include tennis and football (soccer in the USA); reading, especially Borges and Kafka; music including tango, Zappa, Stravinsky and Patricio Rey; movies by Herzog, Buster Keaton, and Buñel; paintings by Bosch, Canaletto and Caravaggio; food (Argentine asados); and playing with sand.