Carlos Varsavsky

Carlos M. Varsavsky (1933–1983) was an Argentine astrophysicist.

Varsavsky was born in Buenos Aires in 1933. After completing secondary studies in the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, he settled in the United States. In the US, Varsavsky graduated in Physical Engineering in which he also obtained a master's degree from the University of Colorado. In 1959 he did his doctorate in Astronomy at Harvard University.

In 1960, Carlos M. Varsavsky returned to Argentina where he joined the newly created group of Astrophysics at the University of Buenos Aires and worked as Senior Lecturer in Physics until 1966. He was the founder and first director of the Argentine Institute of Radio Astronomy, founded in 1964, and President of the Association of Physics in Argentina. Furthermore, he participated in the construction of the largest radio telescope in the Southern Hemisphere, which is located in Villa Elisa, Buenos Aires.

During the Periodo de facto (the military juntas of 1966-1973 and 1976-1983) and in a university environment, Carlos M. Varsavsky maintained a consistent democratic attitude – even during the incident that is known as “la noche de los bastones largos” in which the military of Juan Carlos Onganía government attacked the Faculty of Mathematical and Natural Sciences of Buenos Aires. Students, graduates and professors were beaten with the aim of dismantling the reformist project of building a university of science of excellence.

In 1977, during the Dirty War (Guerra Sucia) that caused the kidnapping and brutal murder of his nephew, David Horacio Varsavsky, Carlos M. Varsavsky saw no choice but to leave Argentina. He emigrated with his family to the United States where Wassily Leontief, Nobel Prize winner in Economics, made him the Associate Director of the Institute of Economic Analysis at New York University.

Carlos M. Varsavsky had two children: Paula Varsavsky, author and cultural journalist, and Martin Varsavsky, entrepreneur and founder of the Varsavsky Foundation. Carlos M. Varsavsky died in 1983, at the age of 49, when he was still working as Associate Director of the Institute of Economic Analysis at New York University.

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