Juan R González-Álvarez
Juan Ramón González-Álvarez | |
|---|---|
| Residence | Spain |
| Nationality | Spanish |
| Known for | Canonical science; Relativity |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Chemistry, Physics |
Juan Ramón González-Álvarez is a Spanish chemist and physicist who works in theoretical and physical chemistry. He is the founder of the Center for CANONICAL SCIENCE, an independent research initiative based in Vigo, Galicia, Spain, through which he develops what he terms "canonical science", a proposed unified formulation of physics, chemistry and biology.
Biography
González-Álvarez studied physics and chemistry at the University of Vigo (Universidade de Vigo). He has been associated with professional bodies including the Ilustre Colegio de Químicos de Galicia (the professional college of chemists of Galicia), and worked as a research assistant at the Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas (IIM), a centre of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), where he took part in studies of the biogeochemistry and hydrodynamics of estuaries and contributed to congresses, reports and monographs.
Describing himself as dissatisfied with the conventional environment for academic research, he subsequently founded the Center for CANONICAL SCIENCE, from which he has pursued independent theoretical work and the writing of technical and popular books.
Scientific contributions
González-Álvarez's work centres on what he calls "canonical science", an attempt to build a common theoretical framework spanning physics, chemistry and biology. Within this programme he has proposed a formulation of quantum mechanics that he positions between the Wigner–Moyal phase-space formulation and the Bohm (de Broglie–Bohm) formulation, work on the nature of heat, an alternative to the standard dark matter model, and studies of what he describes as single-potential multiscale dynamics.
In a 2011 essay contest organised by the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi), he submitted "Continuum and Discrete Features of Nature From a Canonical Science Perspective", arguing that nature is neither entirely digital nor entirely analog but a combination of both, and that many macroscopic processes in physics, chemistry and biology arise from very large numbers of elementary discrete processes.