Institute of Physics of the University of São Paulo

Created in 1970, it is the result of the combination of the Physics departments of the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo and of the former Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Languages.

[3][4] With the mission of teaching at USP, Wataghin arrived in São Paulo and established himself as a professor in the nuclear unit of FFCL-USP, whose specific task was to develop the scientific side and create the laboratories and all the necessary structures in the university.

The first was Giuseppe Occhialini (familiarly known in Italian physics as Beppo), who was already famous for having provided, in 1933, together with Blackett, confirmation of the existence of the positive electron (positron); shortly before that, Carl David Anderson had announced the discovery.

[3][5] The first class of USP physicists graduated in 1936 and was composed of students who would become notable researchers, such as Marcello Damy de Souza Santos and Mario Schenberg.

[3] Among the 1936 graduates, Mario Scheberg, one of the main icons of physics in Brazil, became Wataghin's assistant in 1937 and, commissioned by the State Government, traveled to Italy and Switzerland where he worked with Enrico Fermi and Wolfgang Pauli.

Back at USP, he worked with Giuseppe Occhialini, on cosmic rays, with Abrahão de Moraes, on dielectric physics, and with Walter Schützer and César Lattes, on calculations of the fundamentals of electromagnetism; he also published in the Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.