The plenary session of the Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences of Spain elected its new members at the end of last month.

Antonio Pich Zardoya, professor at the University of Valencia, and José Julián Alemán will strengthen the section of physical and chemical sciences, while José Alberto Padrón Navarta joins the area of natural sciences.

Antonio Pich (Barcelona, 1957) is currently a member of the Institute for Corpuscular Physics, a joint center of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the University of Valencia (UV). In June last year, he gave an engaging lecture at the Academy on the Higgs boson.

José Julián Alemán (Madrid, 1976) is a professor of Organic Chemistry at the Autonomous University of Madrid and is currently developing a project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) in the field of catalysis. José Alberto Padrón Navarta (Tenerife, 1982), an expert in mineralogy, works at the Andalusian Institute of Earth Sciences (IACT-CSIC). In 2023, he was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant to study the processes that take place in the Earth's mantle.

During the same plenary session, the renowned German botanist Thorsten Lumbsch was also elected as a foreign member of the Academy. Lumbsch is the Vice President of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

The four new academics are expected to be welcomed at a special scientific reception, where they will receive their diplomas accrediting them as members of the institution.

Our congratulations to all of them, especially to our colleague Antonio (Toni) Pich.