Discussion journal of the Mössbauer Community

["Roberto C. MERCADER" <mercader AT fisica.unlp.edu.ar>]

25 YEARS OF LACAME

Over the past weeks we are happily celebrating the 25th anniversary of our 
existence as the Latin American Community of Mössbauer spectroscopy. Back 
in 1988, with the exception of Brazil, where local Mössbauer meetings had 
been held biennially since 1982, across our continent at that time there 
were a few researchers, without much funds and with great difficulties, 
attempting to carry out good science in some sparse laboratories. This 
would change for ever when in Rio de Janeiro, from 31 October to 4 
November 1988, the first Latin American Conference on the Applications of 
the Mössbauer Effect was held. At that meeting we would know each other 
and soon identify ourselves as forming part of a broader Latin American 
Mössbauer community.

Along these twenty five years we have grown both individually and 
collectively. We feel ourselves as forming part of a reality that exceeds 
the frontiers of our countries, constituting a Latin American unity that 
finds great pleasure and advantage in collaborating with colleagues from 
other countries of the region and get together again with old friends (and 
not-so-old ones) each two years in the uninterrupted LACAME conferences 
and in frequent scientific collaborations between members of the 
community.

Over this period we have witnessed coming about synchrotron radiation 
laboratories, electron microscopy centers, the Internet. In our own 
institutions there exist diverse new instruments in our laboratories, like 
magnetometers or calorimeters, which have allowed us to greatly deepen our 
research. However, all this has not made us leave our conviction that 
Mössbauer spectroscopy is the unifying method that binds us together.

In other continents this reality is much weaker or simply does no longer 
exist. But in Latin America our Conferences enjoy prestige and enthusiasm 
with new young people joining in and feeling as well that they belong to a 
convening community which has attained a level of good international 
respect.

For this reason, the Mössbauer Spectroscopy Latin American Committee 
joyously greets Latin American colleagues and friends from all over the 
world and hopes for the new generations to succeed in their efforts to 
continue and improve what has been done so far.


Elisa Baggio Saitovitch (Brazil)
Raisa Furet Bridon (Cuba)
Juan Antonio Jaén (Panama)
Roberto Mercader (Argentina)
Noel Nava (Mexico)
Víctor Peña Rodríguez (Peru)
Germán Pérez Alcázar (Colombia)
Carmen Pizarro (Chile)

November 2013

--
Professor Roberto C. Mercader
Departamento de Fisica, IFLP-CONICET
Facultad de Ciencias Exactas
Universidad Nacional de La Plata
115 y 49, 1900 La Plata
Argentina