Santiago Antúnez de Mayolo
Santiago Antúnez de Mayolo was born on January 10, 1887 in the country estate of Vista Bella, province of Aija, Peru, department of Ancash. He was an engineer, physicist and mathematician.
Early years
He studied at Colegio Nacional de la Libertad (Huaraz) and later Colegio Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (Lima), where he met Peruvian writer Abraham Valdelomar. In 1905 he was admitted into the Mathematical Sciences faculty of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima. At the end of the 1906 academic year (24 December), he received a distinction from President José Pardo, receiving a gold medal. After this, he travelled to France to get his degree in Electronic Engineering in the University of Grenoble. On 1912 he returned to Peru, where he worked as a professor in San Marcos University. After this he travelled around Peru, searching for suitable places to construct hydro-electricl central power stations.
In the Third Pan-American Scientific Congress held in Lima, Antúnez de Mayolo presented "Hypothesis about the Constitution of Matter," proposing the existence of a "neutral element" in the atom. Eight years later, Englishman James Chadwick confirmed this theory.