Eduardo Suger Cofiño (November 29, 1938) is a Swiss-born Guatemalan physicist, scholar, educator, and politician. He is one of the founders of Galileo University in Guatemala City and of the Suger Montano Institute. Suger was the first Central American to receive his PhD in physics.
Early life
Suger was born in Zürich, Switzerland on 29 November 1938 to Emilio Suger, a Swiss national, and Estela Cofiño Valladares of Acatenango, Chimaltenango, Guatemala. When World War II broke out, Suger's father was called up to complete his mandatory military service. Suger's mother spoke no German despite living in Switzerland and traveled to the Guatemalan Consulate in Germany for help returning to Guatemala. Shortly after she and Suger returned, she married Enrique Castañeda Rubio, an engineer and official in the Army, and had four more children. Suger lived with his maternal grandmother nearby from the time his mother remarried until his grandmother passed away in 1949/1950.
Education
Suger graduated from La Preparatoria and earned extra money tutoring his classmates in math. He briefly studied chemistry at Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (USAC) before deciding to study at the Zürich's Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), the same school his role model Albert Einstein attended. He lived with his strict father and stepmother while earning his BS in physics and mathematics and MS in theoretical physics. At 20, he began teaching geometry and physics, and later worked for a quantum mechanics and molecular physics lab at IBM. Suger served in the military before returning to Guatemala in 1964. He subsequently earned his PhD in molecular physics the University of Texas at Austin (UTA) in 1971. While at UTA, he was inducted into Sigma Xi science society; did labwork in a molecular physics group; and was an academic assistant for a postgraduate Classical Mechanics course.
Academic career
Suger has been teaching mathematical physics for more than 50 years in universities in four different countries. He taught at the Minerva and Freundenberg Institutes in Zürich; UTA as a PhD candidate in Texas; as a visiting professor in the Informatics and Computer Science departments at Alberto Masferrer Salvadorean University and the Technological University of El Salvador; and USAC, Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, Universidad Mariano Gálvez, Rafael Landívar University, and his own Galileo University in Guatemala City. During the 17 years he worked at USAC, he was affiliated with the medical sciences, engineering, chemistry, pharmacy, economic science, and architecture departments and established the secondary school teaching program. In 1977, Suger joined the faculty at UFM and taught technology, accounting, and economic science classes. Later that year, he proposed the creation of a computer sciences department, which would allow for more in-depth study of these fields; the program proved so popular that it was quickly converted into the Computer Science and Information Technology Institute (IICC). In 1978, enrollment for the related Systems Engineering, Informatics, and Computer Sciences department opened; in 1982, this too became an institute (FISICC) and Suger was named FISICC's first dean. FISICC eventually became part of Galileo University. He also founded the School of Economics and Business Administration department. He founded and directed the Institute of Open Education (IDEA), which challenges the structure of traditional university learning, in 1994.
In 2000, he established Galileo University, one of the first science-technology universities in Guatemala. It was authorized by the Council of Private Higher Education in Guatemala the same year. In 2019, the university, located on Dr Eduardo Suger Cofiño Street in his honor, boasted 40,000 students. Since its foundation, Suger has served as Galileo University's rector.
Military
Suger has a long history of working with the military as both an educator and an engineer. He has been commended for his work in increasing military access to university through his Guatemalan Army Program at Galileo University.