Beyond Avelino's scientific achievements: The building process of a community in catalysis

Abstract

[EN] The scientific career of Avelino has recently been reviewed in some detail [1] and the contributions included in this special issue provide additional valuable and extensive insights into several aspects of his activities from a variety of perspectives, written with the purpose of completing the picture of Avelino as the author of outstanding breakthroughs in zeolite science and catalysis. But, it is precisely his excellence in science that motivates some key questions that have never been properly addressed, not at least in printing form: how all these achievements came into being? What is the nature of the process that has made such wide range of innovations possible? How the material and human resources required for that successful process were gathered and organized? These questions are usually not of primary concern for scientific journals, as this one is, and are in general best regarded as more suitable for historically oriented publications, and even for social and philosophical aspects of the scientific research. However, we think that these questions are relevant to those scientists who are actively contributing to the fields that Avelino has explored so successfully over the years, as well as to all those who wish to understand through the study of Avelino's career how science is practiced and organized as a human activity.