Jorge Sotomayor, professor at USP, died this Friday (07)

Mathematician Jorge Sotomayor Tello, a professor at the University of São Paulo (USP) who was also a researcher at IMPA and one of its first PhDs, died this Friday (7) at the age of 79. The wake will be held at Memorial do Carmo, in the Caju neighborhood, North Zone of Rio de Janeiro, from 12:30 pm to 3 pm. The burial will follow. His specialty was ordinary differential equations, mainly working on lines of curvature and umbilical points, bifurcations and qualitative theory of differential equations.

“Soto, as he was known to everyone, was one of the first PhD graduates from IMPA and a researcher at the institution for many years. His pioneering work in bifurcation theory secured him a prominent place in the history of the development of dynamical systems,” commented the Director-General of IMPA, Marcelo Viana.

The son of accountant Alfonso Sotomayor Ibarra and Clara Rosa Tello de Sotomayor, Jorge was born in Peru and became a naturalized Brazilian citizen. His interest in mathematics was sparked when he was a student of Professor Cyro Herrera at the Colegio Nacional 2 de Mayo in Callao, Peru. He completed his bachelor's degree in the field in 1962 at the University of San Marcos in Lima.

With the support of IMPA researcher Maurício Peixoto (1921-2019), he was admitted for an internship at the Rio de Janeiro institute, where he completed his doctorate in 1964. A few years later, he became a researcher at IMPA, a position he held until the 1990s. In 1993, he became a full professor at the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics at USP, where he remained until his death.