President of the Honour Commission

It was with great pleasure that I accepted the invitation to be President of the Honour Commission of the 50th anniversary of the Capelinhos Volcano, a submarine volcano that erupted on the 27th September 1957 at the eastern side of Fayal island, just one kilometre from the coast, at the natural laboratory that is our archipelago mainly for volcanologic studies.

During thirteen months, I mean till the 24th October 1958, date the volcano went asleep, the volcano united the sea to the earth with ashes and lava, calling the attention of the scientific community and awakening the general curiosity all over the world. The Capelinhos Volcano has been, for a fact, the most observed, studied and interpreted, due to the proximity to Fayal Island and also to the interest and work of the engineer Frederico Machado and the team he gathered together in that occasion. This was then a scientific event very different from the major submarine volcanoes activity witch was back then studied with many difficulties until the spreading of earth globe observation by satellites.