Manuel Sadosky

Manuel Sadosky (April 13, 1914 – June 18, 2005) was an Argentine mathematician, born in Buenos Aires to Jewish Russian immigrants fleeing the pogroms. He is widely considered the father of computer science studies in Argentina.

Son of a shoemaker, Sadosky studied at the Mariano Acosta teachers school. Noted novelist Julio Cortázar was his classmate there, and remained a longtime friend. Since his childhood he was an ardent supporter of San Lorenzo de Almagro. He married fellow mathematician and activist Cora Ratto de Sadosky in 1937; they had one child, Cora Sadosky.

Sadosky graduated as a Doctor in Physics and Mathematics at the University of Buenos Aires in 1940, under supervision of Esteban Terradas. He then moved to the Henri Poincaré Institute in Paris to pursue postdoctoral studies on a scholarship granted by the French Government. After another year in Italy, he returned to Argentina, where he faced complicated employment options because of his opposition to the Peronist regime.

After the coup d'état of 1955 removed Perón, he took up a position as professor at the University of Buenos Aires, where he was vice-dean of the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences from 1957 to 1966.

In 1960 he was commissioned to develop the Computational Institute (Instituto de Cálculo) of the university, home of Clementina (a Ferranti Mercury), the first Argentine computer for research and education. He directed the institute until a coup d'état installed a military dictatorship in 1966, when he resigned in opposition to government intervention in the hitherto autonomous state universities (the Night of the Big Sticks). He moved to Uruguay, finding employment in Montevideo at the Universidad de la República, where he helped to start computer studies and to introduce the first research computer in the country.

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