Brazilian physicist-chemist born in Recife, who innovated inorganic chemistry with the calculation of oxygenated acids ionization constants and one of the most important theoretical chemists in Brazil. Son of commercial representative Antonio Ferreira and public teacher Luiza de Carvalho Ferreira, he attended primary school at Colégio Oswaldo Cruz, and was a mathematics student at Hervásio Guimarães de Carvalho, president for many years of the National Nuclear Energy Commission, in high school (1945), and physical chemistry at the engineering school, who realized its potential for chemistry and physics.
He began his higher education at the chemistry course at the University of São Paulo for three years, and completed his bachelor's degree in chemistry at the Catholic University of Pernambuco (1951). Afterwards, he began teaching in colleges, until achieving (1954) an assistant professorship at UFPE. The following year, at the 7th Annual Meeting of the SBPC, he presented the work Calculating the ionization constants of oxygenated acids, which would later serve as a teaching thesis (1956), also receiving the title of D.Sc. UFPE.
With a grant from the National Research Council, the CNPq, he went to Rio de Janeiro (1957), to work with Jacques Danon at the Brazilian Center for Physical Research, the CBPF. A year later, on a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship, he went to the United States to work with Norman Davidson, developing an experimental work on mercury complexes, with adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine, at the California Institute of Technology, the Caltech.
Back in Brazil, he participated in the project team at the University of Brasília, invited by Darcy Ribeiro and Anísio Teixeira, who developed this project at the National Institute of Pedagogical Studies, INEP, in Rio de January. In exchange with Indiana University, he spent two more years in the US (1963-1964) and with the military coup he extended his stay in North America for three more years, the last being as a visiting professor at Columbia University, at the invitation of Harry Gray, with whom he published an article on electronegativity.
He returned to Brazil (1966) to work at the Northeast Science Teaching Center, Cecine, a complementary university-funded agency. by the Ford Foundation, aimed at providing short-term courses in several states in the Northeast, aimed at training secondary teachers. Two years later, due to the political situation, he accepted an invitation from Earlham College to teach chemistry, as it was a Quaker institution and therefore a pacifist. He returned from the United States (1972) and was invited by Professor Marcionilo de Barros Lins, as a professor of physics at the Federal University of Pernambuco.
He started the consolidation of the Department of Fundamental Chemistry at UFPE (1983), for research in physical chemistry and inorganic chemistry. Author of a significant scientific work in the field of theoretical chemistry, due to the number of articles and works published, due to the theoretical and bibliographical importance of his work, a special issue of the journal Química Nova was published in his honor (1988).
Retired from UFPE (1994), he continued dedicating himself to research in the field of physical chemistry, studying aspects electronics of enzymatic action and molecular evolution, as a CNPq researcher advising Master's and Doctorate degree. Among the various honors received are the Grand Cross of the National Order of Scientific Merit (1995), the Admiral Álvaro Alberto Award in Chemistry from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (1996) and the Simão Mathias Medal from the Brazilian Society of Chemistry (1997).
Source: http://www.dec.ufcg.edu.br/biografias/
Order R - Biography - Brazil School
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/biografia/ricardo-carvalho.htm