[-empyre-] Profile of the Brazilian cirtic Mario Schenberg

["arteonline" <arteonline@arteonline.arq.br>]

Mario Schenberg is one of the richest profile of the history of science in
Brazil:  he was physicist and critic of art, and he did not follow the
politics career too because, in the two times that he was elect state
deputy, his mandate was annulled.  Beyond his dedication to the physics, he
took off photos, he prepared catalogues and he studied eastern science.
During the dictatorship, he did not leave the country, he believed that to
stay here in Brazil  was his civic duty.

In the physics, Schenberg detached as few. Coexisted with the colleagues
José Leite Lopes and Cesar Lattes and was disciple of the Russian Gleb
Wataghin.  He worked with quantum, thermodynamic mechanics and astrophysics.
The physicist conjugated a shining career with his beliefs in the existence
of a parafísica. He believed  that the intuition was one of the main weapons
of science.  Schenberg said that the man of science needed to be open to the
stranger.  "I do not guide myself only for the reasoning", he  said in an
interview to Science Today in 1984.  "It is the intuition that shows the
solution of the problems."

It was in one of his trips to exterior that Schenberg arrived at one of the
main discoveries of his career:  the Urca process, that allowed to
understand the collapse of new stars.  This occurred in 1940, when the
Brazilian was in the United States invitated by the astrophysical Russian
George Gamow.
Schenberg always nourished passion for the art.  His work as critic was
recognized for public and artists.  The physicist wrote texts on Alfredo
Volpi, Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, among others.  His  two women in
life - he was proud of being single - were artists.  He had an enviable
collection of art. "As critic of art, the artists always interested him, he
was interested to know the way artists linked themselves in the world", said
the physics  Amélia Hamburger, member of the Advice of the Chair Mario
Schenberg, Institute of Advanced Studies of the USP.

During the dictatorship Schenberg dedicated himself with more assiduity to
art.  Annulled and forbidden to enter in the university campus, he started
to live of the reviews that he wrote.  "At this time, he discovered that the
artistic way was much more solidary that the academic".