Miguel Kiwi Tichauer
He helped found the Department of Physics of the Universidad de Chile in 1965, and was still leading it half a century later.
ONG Astromanía · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
He headed the Departamento de Física at the Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Chile, in 1969. He returned to head it again in 2014. Forty-five years passed between the two, and the department — which he himself had helped found in 1965 — was still running.
In between, he did the theoretical work on magnetism that earned him the Premio Nacional de Ciencias Exactas 2007 (Chile's national prize for the exact sciences).
What "exchange bias" is, and why it matters
When a ferromagnetic material is placed in contact with an antiferromagnetic one, the former becomes "pinned": its response to the magnetic field shifts, as if it retained a memory of a preferred direction. That phenomenon is called exchange bias, and it is what allows the magnetic reference to be fixed in hard-disk read heads.
Kiwi's theoretical work explaining that coupling is his most-cited contribution. In 2007, when he received the Premio Nacional, his research on the subject had 162 citations and placed him in the top 1% of his field according to the Essential Science Indicators.
Professor Kiwi's outstanding work in developing physics in Chile, in training many doctoral graduates in condensed matter physics, and for the profound impact of his research into the "exchange bias" phenomenon in magnetism
Jury verdict, Premio Nacional de Ciencias Exactas 2007, translated from Spanish
Fifty-six years in the same faculty
Born in Santiago
On 19 June.
Begins research at the Universidad de Chile
Before completing his doctorate.
Mechanical civil engineer
Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María.
Helps found the Departamento de Física
Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Chile.
Doctorate in Physics
University of Virginia, United States.
Head of the Departamento de Física
First term.
Academia Chilena de Ciencias
Member from April.
Premio Nacional de Ciencias Exactas
By unanimous decision of the jury, chaired by minister Yasna Provoste. He was 69.
Premio Luis Federico Leloir
From the Argentine government, for international cooperation in science and technology.
Head of the Departamento de Física
Second term, forty-five years after the first.
- Twice president of the Sociedad Chilena de Física.
- Fellow of the American Physical Society.
- Member of the Academia Chilena de Ciencias since 1994.
- Guggenheim Fellow, and winner of the Premio de la Crítica for the exhibition "Estética en las Ciencias".
- 141 documents published up to December 2018, according to Scopus.
What the sources do not quite settle
He helped found the Departamento de Física at the Facultad de Ciencias in 1965 and headed it in 1969-1970 and 2014-2018.
Recorded by the department itself.
He received the 2007 Premio Nacional de Ciencias Exactas by unanimous decision.
The jury's verdict matches word for word between the Universidad de Chile profile and Emol's coverage.
He was born on 19 June 1938 in Santiago.
The exact day appears in the Spanish-language Wikipedia; institutional sources imply it through the age they attribute to him in 2007.
A 2007 press article places him in the Departamento de Física at the Universidad Católica.
This contradicts every other source, which places him at the Universidad de Chile from 1962. It is almost certainly an error in that article, but it is recorded here nonetheless.
This page does not quote his own words.
No direct verbatim quotation from Kiwi was found in the accessible sources. Rather than attribute phrases to him, it seems better to say they are missing.
- Universidad de Chile. Perfil oficial de Premios Nacionales
View source → - Departamento de Física · Universidad de Chile. Ficha del departamento que ayudó a fundar
View source → - Emol (2007). Anuncio del Premio Nacional, con el fallo del jurado
View source →
How to cite
This is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0, as long as you give credit.
FísicaEterna. (2026). Miguel Kiwi Tichauer — biography, FísicaEterna. Retrieved [access date] from https://www.fisicaeterna.cl/en/biographies/miguel-kiwi
@misc{fisicaeterna_miguel_kiwi,
author = {FísicaEterna},
title = {Miguel Kiwi Tichauer — biography, FísicaEterna},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.fisicaeterna.cl/en/biographies/miguel-kiwi},
note = {CC BY 4.0}
}