Jaime San Martín Aristegui
He has spent more than a decade fighting for Chile to have its own supercomputer, and along the way did front-line mathematics in probability.
When they called to tell him he had won the Premio Nacional (Chile's National Prize), he did not pick up: it was an unknown number. Ten minutes later they called again.
The first thing he said on receiving it was that it was not his alone. "It belongs to a lot of people," he said, starting with his teachers.
Probability, matrices and processes that never end
San Martín works in probability theory: stochastic calculus, Brownian motion, potential theory and quasi-stationary distributions — the behaviour of a random process that is doomed to die out but, while it has not, settles into a stable pattern. A significant part of his work connects matrix analysis with probabilistic objects, a bridge between two fields usually studied separately.
He graduated as a mathematical civil engineer from the Universidad de Chile in 1985 and earned his doctorate in statistics at Purdue in 1990, where his thesis received the W. Bure award. He has been a full professor at the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences since 1985.
Mathematical civil engineer
Universidad de Chile. That same year he joins the faculty as a professor.
Doctorate in Statistics
Purdue University. W. Bure award for best doctoral thesis.
Heads the Departamento de Ingeniería Matemática
Heads the Centro de Modelamiento Matemático
The CMM, opened in April 2000.
Academia Chilena de Ciencias
Member.
Scientific director of the NLHPC
Chile's National Laboratory for High-Performance Computing.
Premio Nacional de Ciencias Exactas
Announced on 24 August, by unanimous decision of the jury, after reviewing ten nominations.
A fight that has lasted more than a decade
The Laboratorio Nacional de Computación de Alto Rendimiento serves Chilean universities and institutions such as ALMA, AURA and the Dirección Meteorológica de Chile. San Martín has been its scientific director since 2012, and his insistence that Chile needs its own computing capacity goes back more than a decade.
It is not an abstract demand: the astronomy installed in the country generates data volumes that, without local infrastructure, are processed abroad. He also founded the CMM's astroinformatics laboratory and leads a Latin American network of massive scientific databases.
his excellence, his international recognition in probability, and his mathematical results that have provided a new theoretical framework
Nicolás Cataldo, Minister of Education, on the jury's ruling (2023), translated from Spanish
The jury also included Rosa Devés, rector of the Universidad de Chile; Juan Yuz, rector of the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María; María Cecilia Hidalgo, president of the Academia Chilena de Ciencias; and Mónica Rubio, winner of the Premio Nacional de Ciencias Exactas (Chile's national prize for the exact sciences) in 2021.
Why he insists the prize is not his alone
The prize is not mine, it belongs to a lot of people: to my teachers, who, besides my family, are the most important people in my life.
Jaime San Martín, 2023, translated from Spanish
In October 2023 he was inducted into the Paseo de la Ciencia (Science Walk) at the Museo Interactivo Mirador, alongside the other National Prize winners.
What the sources do not quite settle
He received the Premio Nacional de Ciencias Exactas 2023, announced on 24 August by unanimous decision.
Ministry of Education statement, with the composition of the jury.
He directed the CMM between 2007 and 2011, and has been scientific director of the NLHPC since 2012.
ANID researcher record.
He did not found the CMM: the centre opened in April 2000 and he took over as director seven years later.
This is clarified because it is an easy mistake to make when reading his CV.
He was born in 1959.
A press source gives 24 December 1959 and an age of 63 at the time of the prize, which fits. No institutional source publishes his date of birth, so the entry records only the year.
- Ministerio de Educación (2023). Comunicado oficial con el fallo y el jurado
View source → - Centro de Modelamiento Matemático. «Es un reconocimiento al trabajo en equipo»
View source → - ANID · Registro de investigadores. Formación, cargos y años exactos
View source → - BioBioChile (2023). Su campaña por el supercomputador nacional
View source →
How to cite
This is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0, as long as you give credit.
FísicaEterna. (2026). Jaime San Martín Aristegui — biography, FísicaEterna. Retrieved [access date] from https://www.fisicaeterna.cl/en/biographies/jaime-san-martin
@misc{fisicaeterna_jaime_san_martin,
author = {FísicaEterna},
title = {Jaime San Martín Aristegui — biography, FísicaEterna},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.fisicaeterna.cl/en/biographies/jaime-san-martin},
note = {CC BY 4.0}
}