Pedro Miguel Etxenike

Notable are also Etxenike interest and ability in disseminating scientific and technological knowledge and making it more accessible to society at large. He has been very active in this field in recent years, giving numerous lectures in different university, cultural and business forums, at which he has always defended the cultural value of scientific activity and encouraged young people to pursue science. He has co-organized outreach activities such as since 2010 the triennial festival "Passion for Knowledge" in San Sebastián.

In 2007 he was among the founders of the Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters of the Basque Country Jakiunde and served as its first president until 2012. He then was named Honorary Chairman. Other positions held include membership of the governing board of the CSIC (Spanish National Research Council) (2001-2007), deputy chairperson of the board of the franco-spanish Euskampus Foundation, and vice-chairmanship of the innovation agency of the Basque government, Innobasque (2008-2012). Since 2012 he chairs the panel of judges of the Princess-of-Asturias-Prize for Scientific and Technical Research.

After leaving government politics, Etxenike continues to play an important role in the science policy of the Basque country. He was central in founding and leading a number of centers, agencies, and initiatives that are now leading research institutions in the Basque country. He is the founder and first president of Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC), founded in 1999. He was a promoter and creator of the mixed CSIC-UPV/EHU centre, the Centre for Materials Physics (CFM) and was its first director (1999-2001) and is still president of the Materials Physics Center associated with CFM. He played a similar role for the Cooperative Research Centre CIC nanoGUNE (founded 2009) and is (in 2019) chairman of its Governing Board.

In 1980 he gave up his professorship in Barcelona to join the first government of the Basque Autonomous Community after the Francoist dictatorship. In the government of Carlos Garaikoetxea he first served as Minister of Education and in 1983 he became Minister of Education and Culture and Spokesman for the Government until the end of the legislative period in 1984.

After post-doctoral studies at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and as Nordita Fellow of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and with stays at Lund University he became Professor of Solid State Physics at the University of Barcelona in 1978. In 1980 he stepped down from this position to join the government of the Basque Autonomous Region. In 1984 he returned to academia as a visiting lecturer at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. In 1986 he moved back to the Basque Country as Professor of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) at its campus in Donostia / San Sebastián. Since 1999 he is also president of the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC).

Etxenike was the son of the medical doctor Pedro Etxenike and the teacher Felisa Landiribar. Growing up with one brother and one sister in a small navarrese village (with about 800 inhabitants at the time) he later attended a Capuchin boarding school He attended the University of Navarre and graduated in Physics in 1972, receiving the Special Degree Prize and End-of-Studies Award. In 1973 began his studies at the University of Cambridge with a March stipend. In 1976 he obtained his Ph.D. (with a thesis directed by John Pendry) and in 1977 he received (directed by Rufus Ritchie) a Doctorate in Physics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, for which he received the Special Doctorate Prize.

Pedro Miguel Etxenike Landiribar, also known as Pedro Miguel Echenique (born 8 June 1950, Isaba, Navarre), is a theoretical solid-state physicist, Professor of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), and former minister of the Basque Autonomous Community.