Ruy Luís Gomes

Who was Ruy Luís Gomes?

Ruy Luís Gomes was a Portuguese mathematician and founder os the Abel Salazar Biomedical Sciences Institute. He was one of the great intellectual figures during the 20th century in Portugal.

His father, the Republican António Luís Gomes, had been a government minister and ambassador to Brazil during the Portuguese First Republic; his mother was Maria José Medeiros de Oliveira. He received a license in mathematics from the University of Coimbra and took his doctorate in 1928. In 1929 he became a professor in the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto. He was one of the founders of the journal Portugaliae Mathematica, in 1937.

Ruy Luís Gomes was a sympathizer of the Portuguese Communist Party, despite never having been a member of the party. In 1951, he was chosen to be the communist presidential candidate, against the candidate of the regime, General Francisco Craveiro Lopes, and the moderate opposition candidate, Admiral Manuel Quintão Meireles. His candidature was invalidated by the Supreme Court of Justice for political reasons, since he was considered a communist. He served two prison terms for political activities, once in the early 1940s and again in 1957-58. However, he continued to be a staunch oppositionist, being forced to exile, first in Argentina from 1958 to 1962, where he taught at the Universidad Nacional del Sur in Bahía Blanca, and then in Brazil from 1962 to 1974, teaching at the Federal University of Pernambuco. He returned to Portugal following the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974. He arrived back on 10 June 1974, and then served as a member of the Council of State and as rector of the University of Porto.