The University of La Laguna will hold the session of next Tuesday, May 6th at 7:00 pm in its Paraninfo. investiture as Doctor and Doctor Honoris Causa The award was given to Spanish biologist Ana Crespo and American astrophysicist and Nobel laureate John Mather. This is the second such ceremony held by the academic institution in 2025, which aims to recognize exemplary careers in various fields of knowledge that have inspired the scientific community and made significant contributions to their respective specialties.
As this is an academic event, it will begin with the entrance of the delegation of doctors from the University of La Laguna, who will attend the ceremony dressed in gowns and mortarboards to symbolically welcome the two honorees to the university cloister. The university's secretary general, Juan Antonio García, will read the resolution conferring this title to begin the ceremony.
Next will come the moment for words of praise (laudatio) of the honorees, represented by their respective sponsors, who proposed and defended the nominations for this distinction before the governing bodies of the center. Thus, the emeritus professor and former rector Mª Luisa Tejedor Salguero will present the merits of Ana Mª Crespo, while the astrophysicist and Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of La Laguna John Beckman will do the same for John Mather.
Following these speeches, the Rector of the University of La Laguna, Francisco García, will administer the oath and confer honorary doctorates upon the new doctor and doctor, presenting them with the symbols of this distinction: the mortarboard, gloves, medal, ring, and the book of wisdom. Once invested, Crespo and Mather will deliver their acceptance speeches.
A musical performance by clarinetist Marta Pío and flautist Óscar Sánchez will precede the speech with which the rector will conclude an event that will culminate with the academic anthem. Gaudeamus Igitur.
Two leading figures
John Cromwell Mather (1946) is an American astrophysicist and cosmologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite with George Smoot. This work helped solidify the Big Bang theory of the universe. According to the Nobel Prize committee, "the COBE project can also be considered the starting point of cosmology as a precision science." He was also the project manager for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and is currently a senior astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Maryland.
Ana María Crespo de las Casas (1948) is the president of the Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences of Spain, the first woman to hold this position since its founding in 1847. Professor Emerita at the Complutense University of Madrid, her area of expertise is the relationship between phenotypic and genomic characteristics of fungi and lichens. Her contributions have been so significant that her colleagues have named seven species, one subgenus, and several genera after her, most of them lichens. Among other positions, she has served as Director General of Universities and General Coordinator of the National Commission for the Evaluation of Research Activity (CNEAI).
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