Javier Solana

Dr Francisco Javier Solana Madariaga (born July 14 1942 in Madrid, Spain) is the High Representative of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the Secretary-General of both the Council of the European Union (EU) and the Western European Union (WEU). He was a physicist who became a political minister for 13 years before serving as NATO Secretary-General 1995–99. Dr. Solana was designated to become EU Minister for Foreign Affairs in 2006, but is likely to continue in his present role while the future of the EU is decided.

Background and career as physicist

Solana comes from a well-known Spanish family and is the grandson of Spanish League of Nations disarmament chief, diplomat, writer and European integrationist Salvador de Madariaga and Scottish scholar and economic historian Constance Archibald de Madariaga.

Related Topics:
League of Nations - Disarmament - European - Salvador de Madariaga - Scholar - Economic historian

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His father was a chemistry professor, and his mother the writer Nieves Mathews.

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His older brother Luis was imprisoned for his political activities opposing the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.

Related Topics:
Dictatorship - Francisco Franco

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He studied in the El Pilar College, an exclusive Catholic secondary school, before going to Complutense University (UCM). There as a student in 1963 he was sanctioned by the authorities for having organised an opposition forum at the so-called called Week of University Renovation.

Related Topics:
El Pilar College - Complutense University - 1963

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In 1964 he clandestinely joined the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), which had been illegal under Franco since the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939. In the same year he graduated and then spent a year furthering his studies at Spain's Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) and in the United Kingdom. In 1965 he went to the United States of America, where he spent six years studying at various universities on a Fulbright Scholarship.

Related Topics:
1964 - Spanish Socialist Workers' Party - Spanish Civil War - 1939 - Spain's Higher Council for Scientific Research - United Kingdom - 1965 - United States of America - Fulbright Scholarship

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He taught physics for a time at the University of Chicago and at La Jolla, California, and joined in the protests against the Vietnam War.

Related Topics:
University of Chicago - La Jolla - California - Protests - Vietnam War

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He received his doctorate in physics with a dissertation on superfluidity called Elementary Excitations in Helium 2, in 1968 from the from the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences of the University of Virginia, where he taught and researched until 1971, extending his planned stay in the US by a year in order to continue his investigations as well as being President of the Association of foreign students.

Related Topics:
Superfluidity - Helium - 1968 - University of Virginia - 1971

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Returning to Spain he became a lecturer in solid-state physics at the Autonomous University of Madrid UAM, and then in 1975 he became a Professor at Complutense University. During these years he published more than 30 articles. For a time he worked as assistant to Nicolás Cabrera, whom he had met when Cabrera was Professor at the University of Virginia. The last PhD dissertations that he directed were in the early 1990s.

Related Topics:
Solid-state physics - Autonomous University of Madrid - 1975 - Professor - Nicolás Cabrera - PhD - Dissertation - 1990s

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