Antonmaria “Tim” Alessio Minzoni passed away on the 1 July 2017. He was one of the leading applied mathematicians in Mexico and had a profound influence on the development of this subject, mathematical physics, and their applications to other branches of science.

Starting in 1976 and throughout his academic career, Tim was a professor at the Intituto de Investigaciones en Matemáticas Aplicádas y en Sistemas (IIMAS) of UNAM in Mexico City, where he reached the highest academic rank in 1995.

Tim’s primary research area was nonlinear wave propagation. However, he was fascinated by and contributed to an unusually wide breadth of research in physics and biophysics, based on long-term and enthusiastic collaborations with leading experts in each area.

His thesis and early work, until the mid 1980s, focused on nonlinear effects in guided modes in water waves and other geophysical fluid systems. In the 1990s his attention turned to solitons and coherent structures, and in the last 15 years this work linked with the study of optical solitons in nonlocal systems, particularly nematic liquid crystals. In collaboration with G. Assanto of the University of Rome “Roma Tre” and N. F. Smyth of the University of Edinburgh, Tim developed an analytical theory of optical soliton propagation in liquid crystals which proved to be valid in experimental regimes. A key to this understanding was the use of asymptotic analysis to incorporate the radiation shed as the solitons evolve.

Extracted from the journal Physics Today, People & History