Fernando de Mendonça (born December 2, 1924 in

Guaramiranga Guaramiranga is one of the smallest towns of the Northeastern state of Ceará in Brazil. It is located at an altitude of 865 m in the Serra de Baturité hills 110 km from the state capital of Fortaleza. Guaramiranga is known locally for its ...

, Ceará) is a Brazilian electronic engineer and researcher, founder and first director of Brazil's

National Institute for Space Research The National Institute for Space Research ( pt, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, INPE) is a research unit of the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovations, the main goals of which are fostering scientific research an ...

Career

Mendonça graduated in

Electronic Engineering Electronics engineering is a sub-discipline of electrical engineering which emerged in the early 20th century and is distinguished by the additional use of active components such as semiconductor devices to amplify and control electric current ...

at the

Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica The ''Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica'' (ITA; en, Aeronautics Institute of Technology) is an institution of higher education maintained by the Brazilian Air Force and is located in São José dos Campos, Brazil. ITA is consistently ran ...

(ITA) in 1958. After, he received his PhD in Radio sciences from Stanford University, in the USA. During his period in the United States, Mendonça established contacts with

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

in the name of the Brazilian government, contacts that played an important role in the later development of the Brazilian Space Program. After his return to Brazil, he was nominated by President

Jânio Quadros Jânio da Silva Quadros (; January 25, 1917 – February 16, 1992) was a Brazilian lawyer and Politics of Brazil, politician who served as the 22nd president of Brazil from January 31 to August 25, 1961, when he resigned from office. He als ...

to take part in the preliminary committee in charge of the studies for the deployment of the national space program. When the

(INPE) was founded in 1971, Mendonça became its first Director.

References

External links

Organization and structure of a national system of scientific and technological information - UNESCO (page 8)
1924 births Living people Brazilian scientists {{Brazil-scientist-stub