BASQUE RESEARCH
 Basque research, development and innovation web site

To start with – congratulations - President of Elhuyar! How did that come about?

Thank you very much, indeed. The truth is that my vocation and my main activity have always been scientific research; I am a scientist. But I am also a lover of the Basque language and I have always strived to marry the international character of science with the promotion of Basque. This, of course, coincides with the mission of Elhuyar [“Working to consolidate Basque in the field of science and technology, as well as amongst the public in general; and with the clear aim of developing new fields, creating an active and critical Basque-speaking community”].

Also, over the years, I have always had links with Elhuyar and I really believe that it represents a pioneering project, which has put down strong roots and has not lost its target aims. It is a project in which I believe. Thus, when the Presidency was offered to me, I had little option but to accept, and I did so with pleasure.

You said that your relationship with Elhuyar is not new.

Correct, it has not been a very close relationship, but I have written several articles for the current Elhuyar journal, and also for the old journal. Over the past few years, I have participated in the Elhuyar encyclopaedic dictionary of science and technology, I appeared on their television programme, Teknopolis, and on their radio programme, Norteko Ferrokarrilla, and I have been a member of the jury of the CAF-Elhuyar awards; I have known the project close up.

And how do you see Elhuyar in the future?

The task undertaken by Elhuyar over the past 40 years has been impressive; it has laid the necessary bases for the harmonisation of a specialised scientific communication and the Basque language. In the development of the Basque language, its contribution has been enormous and exemplary; it can well serve as a model to be followed for other languages worldwide.

This is what has been done so far. Now, however, things have changed: society has changed completely, the situation of the Basque language has also changed. It is, thus, time to think over; luckily, Elhuyar has done so, and we have begun a new era.

Nonetheless, starting a new era does not mean we need to stop doing what we have being doing so far. It means that we need to keep going, but in a different way, adapting to the needs that the new situation requires and offers. And we also have new activities. Elhuyar has been reorganised, now it is a group made up of four units [science, language & technology, consultancy, and communication], in order to keep going in line with the current needs.

I am going to ask you a question which I am often asked: why undertake communication of science and technology in Basque?

Because it forms part of the normalisation of the Basque language. I’ll explain this in a more extensive way, but this is the short answer. For Basque to be a living and normalised language, it is essential that there is also a specialised communication in all areas in Basque.

It is a normal question to ask and something that needs to be considered seriously. How should we publish our research? In English, in specialised international journals, as others do. We also speak English at international conferences and we discuss in English with international collaborators.

But, among Basque speakers, even in the case of specialised topics, we should be able to discuss them in Basque. To this end, we need a scaffold; otherwise, we need to rely on English or another language to discuss specialised topics. We need a scaffold, and this scaffold is achieved when we express somewhere something in Basque.

At the beginning, we used to publish specialised papers also in Basque in the Elhuyar journal. I have a specialised article written in Basque at that time in the original Elhuyar journal. But that journal does not exist any more, and I believe we do not need it. Nevertheless, writing the thesis in Basque helps a lot; because, when one writes, one thinks, and this is something that is very helpful in the normalisation of specialized Basque communication. And what is written is a reference. If we think in Basque, and we write straight from our thinking with no need for a translation, it is even better.

This is necessary for the Basque language to be a living language. Why not create new science in Basque? Science is not created solely in English; it is also created in other languages, in Basque as well. The main language at NanoGUNE is English, both written and spoken; we have researchers from 22 different countries. But, amongst Basque speakers, we speak Basque completely naturally, even when we discuss specialised topics. In this way, Elhuyar has made a contribution to the normalisation of Basque. What is more, then there is the dissemination of science and the circle is complete.

You have mentioned nanoGUNE. What is your work at this research centre?

I am responsible for the overall design, strategy, and performance of nanoGUNE, which is composed mainly by experimental research groups. But I also undertake research myself. I am a theoretical researcher; I have always been interested in the behaviour of electrons in matter. This involves a highly complex problem: there are many electrons and, in physics, the only problem that can be solved exactly is the two-body problem; if we have three bodies, it is all over, it cannot be solved. In matter there are many electrons, and interesting things happen.

So, my field has always been that of electron dynamics in matter, whether in solids, on surfaces or in nanostructures. I started in the 80s, working on the investigation of the tunnelling microscope, which had just been invented at that time. That was, in a way, one of the bases of nanotechnology, because it enabled, for the first time, to see matter atom by atom. It also enabled manipulating the atoms: taking an atom and putting it elsewhere. This was made possible by the tunnelling microscope, and at that time I started to investigate it.

So you have worked in nanotechnology from the very start.

Yes, but at that time the word nanotechnology was not used. Then I moved on towards nanoscience. I do not know know what I will be doing next, but I do know what I have been doing so far. Currently, I am working on the electronic excitations of graphene; that is, how graphene electrons are excited by external perturbations. When electronic excitations are collective, we have a plasmon; we have found a new plasmon. Here is the new plasmon! [at this point, he picked up a bunch of papers that were on the table].

We have identified a new plasmon, i.e. a new collective electronic excitation; we will soon submit our prediction to the prime physics journal, the Physical Review Letters.

What a surprise! So we are going to announce this news before them [laughter].

Yes, you are. I am currently putting the finishing touches to the paper and … well … it will take some time before it is published. The point here is that we have made a prediction, and we will be publishing that prediction through this paper.

What will be the title?

Acoustic plasmons in extrinsic free-standing graphene. As I said, it is a prediction; but here, at nanoGUNE, we are able to measure this kind of things. Other things have been measured in graphene, but not what we are looking for. However, as we have experimental tools capable of measuring this, the next step will be precisely that – to measure it. And then we should learn what to do with it.

The typical question, then: what for?

At the moment, it serves to satisfy our curiosity. For the time being, just that.

Biography

Txema Pitarke was born in Bilbao in 1960. He is a PhD in Physics; he received his PhD degree in 1990 at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), under the supervision of Pedro Miguel Etxenike. It was the first PhD thesis presented in Basque and English at the same time.

He has been Full Professor of Condensed Matter Physics at the UPV/EHU since 2000. He is the Director General of nanoGUNE, since its creation in 2006.

He has been active, for a long time, in the promotion of the Basque language: he has had close links with the Basque Summer University (UEU), he was the winner of the Azkue Award for research undertaken in Basque, and he also won the Agustin-Zumalabe research scholarship awarded by the Society of Basque Studies (Eusko Ikaskuntza). Since 2013, he has been President of the Elhuyar Foundation.

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