Amable Liñán Prince of Asturias Award for Technical & Scientific Research 1993

Amable Liñán (Noceda de Cabrera, León, España, 1934 - ) is considered to be a world authority in the field of combustion, a subject on which he has written a book -published by the prestigious Oxford University Press- with Forman A. Williams, the foremost American expert on this subject, which is considered the most advanced treatise on the matter. Likewise, he is a highly outstanding figure in modern Spanish applied mathematics.

Liñán, a Doctor in Engineering, is Professor of Fluid Mechanics at the Madrid College of Aeronautical Engineering, and has also carried out teaching work at the universities of California, Michigan and Princeton (US), and Marseilles (France), among others. Liñán, who holds a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering, is Professor of Fluid Mechanics and Professor Emeritus at the School of Aeronautical Engineering, Polytechnic University of Madrid, and has also taught at UCSD, University of Michigan and Princeton University (United States) and at Aix Marseille University (France), among others. He has been an Adjunct Professor at Yale University since 1997.

As far as his professional work goes, he has been an engineering researcher at the National Technical Aerospace Institute (INTA) and has been the chief or associate researcher on a number of contracts for research into basic combustion problems (both in reactors and in the dynamics of planetary probes) for NASA and the European Space Agency, among other bodies. He was the representative of the European Space Agency on NASA´s Microgravity Combustion Group and the editor of highly-prestigious publications, such as Combustion Science and Technology and the European Journal of Applied Mathematics.

His works on the application of mathematics to combustion problems are considered to have been world-wide firsts, to such a point that the letters of introduction and support for him as a candidate, arriving from universities and research centres in different countries, had no doubts in considering him to be the top theorist in the subject in the world, following the death of the Soviet Ya. B. Zel´dovich. He was awarded the Zel’dovich Gold Medal by the International Combustion Institute in 1994.

A Member of the Royal Academy of Natural, Physical and Exact Sciences, he also belongs to the Mexican National Academy of Engineering, and has written numerous books and scientific works. Likewise, he has received the research-team award granted by the Polytechnic University Foundation (1986) and an commemorative award on the 50th anniversary of INTA (1992). Holder of the Castile-León Prize for Technical and Scientific Research (1995), he was awarded the Miguel Catalán Research Prize by the Community of Madrid in 2007. He also holds honorary degrees from Spain’s Carlos III University and the University of Zaragoza.