Rafael Benguria
Honorary Professor
Ph.D. Princeton University, United States
Investigation Area: Mathematical physics
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rbenguri@uc.cl
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955047072
IN THIS PAGE
Presentation
Professor Emeritus of the Faculty of Physics, Universidad Católica, Chile
Rafael Benguria is a Civil Electrical Engineer from the Universidad de Chile and holds a Master’s degree in Physics from the same institution. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from Princeton University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Rockefeller University. His area of research is Mathematical Physics. In 1990 he joined the Universidad Católica as a professor.
In 2005 he received the Premio Nacional de Ciencias Exactas for the high impact of his research results in disciplines such as physics, mathematics and chemistry.
In 2024 he was recognized as Professor Emeritus for his contribution to the development of the Faculty, for having taught more than 5,000 students throughout his academic career, and for the impact of his research worldwide.
Investigation lines
I work on different problems in mathematical physics. My main areas of research are: i) Spectral geometry: the relation between the spectrum of an operator and the geometry of the underlying domain. I am particularly interested in isoperimetric inequalities for the eigenvalues of Schrödinger and Laplacian operators; ii) Stability of matter: lower bounds on the fundamental state energy of N-particle systems in atomic physics. I am also interested in the maximum degree of ionization of atoms and molecules; iii) Propagation of fronts in reaction diffusion equations; in particular in the estimation of the propagation velocity of fronts; iv) Existence, regularity and uniqueness of solutions of nonlinear elliptic equations; in particular in properties of Brezis-Nirenberg type problems.