View source for Alexandre Quintanilha

{{Short description|Portuguese scientist (born 1945)}}
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{{BLP sources|date=July 2023}}
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{{Infobox officeholder
| name                = Alexandre Quintanilha
| honorific-suffix    = [[Military Order of Saint James of the Sword|GOSE]]
| image               = Alexandre Quintanilha, 2015.png
| caption             = Quintanilha in 2015
| office              = [[Assembly of the Republic (Portugal)|Member of the Portuguese Parliament]]
| term_start          = 23 October 2015
| term_end            = 25 March 2024
| birth_name          = Alexandre Tiedtke Quintanilha
| birth_date          = {{Birth date and age|df=y|1945|8|9}}
| birth_place         = Lourenço Marques (now [[Maputo]]), [[Portuguese Mozambique]]
| party               = [[Socialist Party (Portugal)|Socialist Party]]
| alma_mater          = [[University of the Witwatersrand]]<br>[[University of Paris]]
| spouse              = {{marriage|[[Richard Zimler]]|2010}}
| website             = [https://www.parlamento.pt/DeputadoGP/Paginas/Biografia.aspx?BID=5930 Parliament Website - Parlamento.pt]
| footnotes           = 
| citizenship         = [[Portugal]]
| constituency        = [[Porto (Assembly of the Republic constituency)|Porto]]
}}
'''Alexandre Tiedtke Quintanilha''', <small>[[Order of St. James of the Sword|GOSE]]</small> (born 9 August 1945) is a Portuguese scientist, former director of the [[Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular]] (Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology) of the [[University of Porto]] and Professor at [[ICBAS]] - Abel Salazar Institute of Biomedical Sciences.

== Biography ==
Alexandre Tiedtke Quintanilha, <small>[[Order of St. James of the Sword|GOSE]]</small> was born in Lourenço Marques (now [[Maputo]]) [[Portuguese East Africa]] on August 9, 1945, at the time a [[Portugal|Portuguese]] colony. His father, Aurélio Quintanilha, was Portuguese, from the [[Azores]] islands, and one of the first scientists to study [[fungi]].  Aurélio Quintanilha worked in Coimbra, Berlin and Paris. Alexandre Quintanilha's mother was German, from Berlin. The family moved to Mozambique in the 1940s, where Alexandre was born.

=== Studies ===
Quintanilha completed his secondary school studies in Lourenço Marques, then went to South Africa to study at university level. He completed his [[B.Sc.]] (Hons) in [[theoretical physics]] in 1967 ([[University of the Witwatersrand]], in [[Johannesburg]]), and his [[Ph.D.]] in [[solid state physics]] in 1972 ([[University of Paris]]).

=== Work ===
Quintanilha switched his focus to biology on moving to California in 1972.  He worked for nearly 18 years at the [[University of California, Berkeley]], in the US, before returning to Portugal in 1990 and becoming director of the [[Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular]] (Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology) of the [[University of Porto]].

=== Personal life ===
Alexandre is married to his longtime partner, [[North-American]] writer and journalist [[Richard Zimler]]. They met in December of 1978 and began living together that same month. They married as soon as [[same-sex marriage]] was legalized in [[Portugal]], in 2010. Since 1990 the two men have been living in [[Porto]], [[Portugal]].

== External links ==
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20050416202839/http://www.esf.org/esf_pressarea_page.php?language=0&section=6&year=2003&newsrelease=68 European Science Foundation appoints Alexandre Tiedtke Quintanilha as new chairman of the Standing Committee for Life and Environmental Sciences]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20051218101319/http://130.251.107.180/biotethics/member_quintanilha.html Alexandre Quintanilha on BioTEthics]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20051025101208/http://www.nationalgeographic.pt/revista/0901/Ficheiros_Secretos/default.asp Alexandre Quintanilha on National Geographic Portugal] (Portuguese)

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Quintanilha, Alexandre}}
[[Category:Portuguese people of German descent]]
[[Category:20th-century Portuguese scientists]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:Portuguese LGBTQ scientists]]
[[Category:Portuguese gay men]]
[[Category:University of the Witwatersrand alumni]]
[[Category:1945 births]]
[[Category:Gay scientists]]
[[Category:Gay academics]]
[[Category:21st-century Portuguese LGBTQ people]]
[[Category:21st-century Portuguese scientists]]
[[Category:21st-century Portuguese biologists]]
[[Category:20th-century Portuguese biologists]]
[[Category:21st-century biologists]]


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