Sagunto mourns Ramón Lapiedra, physicist and former rector of the University of Valencia
Sagunto City Council has ordered flags at half-mast for three days following the death, at 86, of Ramón Lapiedra Civera, a theoretical physics professor and the city's Adoptive Son since 2020.
Sagunto has lost one of its most distinguished residents. Ramón Lapiedra Civera, a professor of Theoretical Physics and the city's honorary Adoptive Son (Hijo Adoptivo, a civic honour), died on Monday at 86; the City Council ordered flags at half-mast for three days. Born in Almenara on 10 July 1940, his ties to Sagunto began in 1946, when his family moved there after his father bought the town's trinquet, a court for the traditional Valencian ball game pilota valenciana.
A physics graduate of Madrid's Complutense University, he earned his doctorate in theoretical physics between Paris and Barcelona, spent time at the Collège de France and France's CNRS research institute, and built a career around gravitation, cosmology, astrophysics and the foundations of quantum mechanics, publishing more than forty papers internationally. He served as rector of the University of Valencia from 1984 to 1994, received an honorary doctorate from Jaume I University in Castelló, and chaired the civic platform Valencians pel Canvi.
In 2004 he published an award-winning essay on the limits of human knowledge, later expanded in a Spanish edition by publisher Tusquets. Before becoming Sagunto's Adoptive Son by a 2020 plenary vote, he had already received the top prize in Valencian letters in 1983 and the title of Valencian of the Year in 1987; his tribute ceremony in Sagunto followed in 2021.
Mayor Darío Moreno praised what he called an unrepeatable career devoted to knowledge and Valencian culture.
The title of Adoptive Son, awarded by the plenary in 2020, is reserved in Sagunto for people who, without being born in the city, have left a public mark especially significant to it; in Lapiedra's case, the honour came after an academic and cultural career that went far beyond the local sphere. His death has been marked in recent days not only by public institutions but also by Valencian media outlets, which have revisited his role as one of the most internationally recognised Spanish theoretical physicists of his generation.
The City Council has not yet announced any further public events beyond the half-mast flags, though municipal sources do not rule out an institutional tribute in the coming months, in line with the one already held for him in 2021.
According to Sagunto City Council, with additional data from Wikipedia.