My father, Eduardo Ortiz, who has died aged 90, was a professor of mathematics and history of science at Imperial College, who spent most of his adult life in exile in London, but remained a passionate supporter of the sciences in his native Argentina.
Eduardo was born in Buenos Aires, to Pola (nee Crespo) and Ricardo Ortiz. His father, a civil engineer and liberal economist, was a strong influence on his career and his worldview. His mother, from a family of early settlers on the Rio Negro in the south of Argentina where he would spend his summers, gave him a strong sense of his roots.
Eduardo studied mathematics at the University of Buenos Aires, graduating in 1957 and the same year marrying Ines Weyland. He completed his PhD in 1961. With the backdrop of a military coup, he then left Argentina to spend a year at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Dublin, followed by a year teaching at Imperial College London.
In 1964, optimistic that the political situation was improving, our family returned to Buenos Aires, where Eduardo became a lecturer at the university. However, a further military coup in 1966 was followed by the Night of the Long Sticks, when the army entered the University of Buenos Aires to break up protests, and beat students and staff. As a result, almost 1,000 staff resigned, Eduardo included. It was not an easy decision for him, and he was aware of that such a dramatic loss of talent would cast a long shadow on the study of the sciences in Argentina. After resigning, he travelled with colleagues to other universities in Argentina to encourage staff to stay on and defend the country’s scientific heritage.
After two years at the University of Lima in Peru, he was offered a life-changing opportunity to become a lecturer at Imperial College London. He arrived in 1967, was appointed a professor in 1993, and remained there for the rest of his life.
Eduardo specialised in the emerging field of numerical mathematics, developing methods to solve differential equations in the early days of computers. His work allowed him to see his friends and colleagues all over the world, including many of those who had resigned alongside him in 1966.
He and my mother, Ines, divorced in 1970. The following year he married Susana Perez, a fellow Argentinian academic, whom he met at Imperial College.
As his career progressed, he transitioned into work on the history of science, with a particular interest in the development of natural sciences in South America. He became an expert in this field, and sought to preserve and celebrate the rich cultural history that had to some extent been lost in successive military coups and waves of emigration.
After his retirement, Eduardo became an emeritus professor at Imperial College, spent a year at Harvard University and was made a Guggenheim fellow.
Distance never dimmed Eduardo’s love for his homeland, a love he he passed on to his now very English family. Well into his 80s, he took us on an epic journey to re-find the tiny abandoned island on the Rio Negro where he would spend his summers as a child, introducing us to a rich slice of Argentinian life.
He continued to work right up to his last days, and just weeks before his death, he presented a paper at a conference celebrating a colleague.
He is survived by Susana, and by his grandchildren, Joe, Mati and Tomas, and me.
