Manuel Cardona Castro (7 September 1934 – 2 July 2014) was a Spanish condensed matter physicist. According to the ISI Citations web database, Cardona was one of the eight most cited physicists since 1970. He specialized in solid state physics. Cardona's main interests were in the fields of: Raman scattering (and other optical spectroscopies) as applied to semiconductor microstructures, materials with tailor-made isotopic compositions, and high Tc superconductors, particularly investigations of electronic and vibronic excitations in the normal and superconducting state.
Cardona was born in Barcelona, Spain in 1934. After obtaining a Masters in physics in 1955 from University of Barcelona Cardona was awarded a fellowship to work as a graduate student at Harvard University starting in 1956. At Harvard he began investigations of the dielectric properties of semiconductors, in particular germanium and silicon. With this work as a thesis he received a PhD in Applied Physics at Harvard. From 1959 till 1961 he continued similar work on III-V semiconductors at the RCA Laboratories in Zurich, Switzerland. In 1961 he moved to the RCA Labs in Princeton, NJ, where he continued work on the optical properties of semiconductors and started investigations of the microwave properties of superconductors. In 1964 he became a member of the Physics Faculty of Brown University (Providence, RI). In June–September 1965 he taught at the University of Buenos Aires under the auspices of the Ford Foundation. In 1971 he moved to Stuttgart, Germany as a founding director of the then-recently created Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research. Concomitantly he became scientific Member of the Max Planck Society, where he became emeritus in 2000.
From 1992 to 2004, Cardona served as chief editor of Solid State Communications.
Besides receiving over at least 61 awards during his career, Cardona held eleven honorary doctorates. Some notable honors include:
1964 American Physical Society, Fellow
1982 Narcís Monturiol Medal, Government of Catalonia
1984 Frank Isakson Prize, American Physical Society
1984 Fellow, Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science
1984 Corresponding Member, Royal Academy of Sciences of Barcelona
1987 Member, National Academy of Sciences of the USA
1987 Grand Cross of Alfonso X el Sabio, Spain
1988 Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, named after the Crown Prince of Spain
1991 Member, Academia Europaea
1994 Max Planck Research Prize, shared with E. E. Haller, Berkeley
1995 Corresponding Member, Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences
1997 John Wheatley Award, American Physical Society
2001 Nevill Mott Medal and Prize
2003 Matteucci Medal by the Accademia nazionale delle scienze, Italy