Our special guest is Dr. Luis Echegoyen, 2019 president of the American Chemical Society. Dr. Echegoyen is the Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry at the University of Texas, El Paso. Previously he was the Director of The Chemistry Division of the National Science Foundation and before that professor and Chairman of the Department of Chemistry at Clemson University.
Dr. Luis Echegoyen graduated with a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Puerto Rico and did his postdoc at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Next, he transferred to Union Carbide as a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopist. In 1977 he returned to the University of Puerto Rico and started his fruitful academic career. He also had professorship positions at the University of Maryland and the University of Miami, and did two sabbatical terms, one at the Universite Louis Pasteur, France, and another at the Swiss Institute of Technology or ETH, in Zurich.
In this conversation, Dr. Echegoyen talks about his treasured memories of childhood in Cuba. His father, the internationally acclaimed actor Luis Echegoyen, who scaped with the family and took refuge in Puerto Rico when Fidel Castro ousted the dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. Those were hard times. But hard work and perseverance rendered fruit. Thanks to his father, Dr. Echegoyen met in person famous people like Leopoldo Fernández (Trespatines), star in the internationally known TV and radio show "La Tremenda Corte", and the world-renowned singer Celia Cruz.
