And it was a fortuitous decision, one that led Pisanty into a stellar career, paid big dividends for the world of computer networks, especially in Mexico, and brought Pisanty admission to the Internet Hall of Fame.
“I was initially excited by oil extraction, and then I got more interested in the downstream process – petrochemicals,” Pisanty said in a video interview. “I was very curious about how things work.
“There was one chemistry subject which really caught my attention, where they explain the way surfaces work at the atomic and molecular level. And it hit me that I wanted to understand things at that level, so I ended up going into theoretical quantum chemistry which is exactly the place where theory is made about physics.”
That ah-hah experience, coupled with a growing, parallel interest in computer technology, led Pisanty into the Department of Theoretical Chemistry, ultimately to a Ph.D in chemistry and physical chemistry, and then to a professional life marked by distinguished positions in the world of computing, including his role as Director General for Academic Computing Services at the National University of Mexico (UNAM).
The evolution of his interest says a lot about Pisanty, who describes himself as a translator, a person who builds bridges between different fields and different cultures.
“I think that’s marked my career – being the person who connects different sides,” Pisanty said. “I’m the science guy who went into computing, the chemistry guy who did quantum theory, the computer person who gets into governance. It’s a thing that I do.”
The role of bridge building even has cultural roots in Pisanty’s own family history.
Although he was born and raised in Mexico and considers himself thoroughly Mexican, Pisanty’s parents were both Bulgarian Jews whose families came to Mexico, in one case in search of opportunity and in another fleeing the growing influence of Nazism.
“I actually think it’s a very Jewish trait – the guy who’s on the border, translating between different sides so they can come together,” Pisanty said.
Born in 1953 in Mexico City, Pisanty grew up in comfortable but hardly luxurious circumstances. His father was a doctor who worked 14-hour days in public hospitals and private practice. His mother, who died of cancer when Pisanty was a young teenager, spoke five languages; her work required long days and often three hours’ of prep in the evening. So in the evening, she often worked alongside Pisanty and his sister who were doing their homework.
Still, from an early age, Pisanty developed a deep attachment to the rhythms and beauty of Mexico City.
“The city was a very different place at the time,” Pisanty recalled. “It was much smaller, and it had blue skies. And it was safer! Kids could walk the streets and take public transportation.”
He was raised in what he describes as a “very bookish home,” and, nurtured by his father, Pisanty’s interest in science began early. (The same was true for Pisanty’s sister, now an environmental researcher in northern Mexico’s Cuatro Cienegas Basin, a nature preserve with a singular ecosystem whose ponds holding primeval life forms are in danger of drainage by the neighboring dairy industry).
“We had lots of support for learning about science,” Pisanty said. “My father would draw things, he would take a book out of the bookshelf to pique our interest – ‘Microbe Hunters’ by the Dutch writer Paul de Kruif was one I loved. And he kept us thinking straight, thinking rigorously, which is so important in science.
“On Sundays, we would go out to lunch at a modest restaurant, which left enough money for the bookstore afterward.”
Over the course of a conversation, it’s easily apparent that Pisanty’s interests are eclectic, and not limited to science. His speech is peppered with references to etymology, history, literature, film.
But post-secondary education in Mexico, as in Europe, requires students to choose a faculty early on, and when he entered the university in 1971 it was clear Pisanty would opt for science, albeit petroleum engineering at first.
“In this Napoleonic system you have to choose a career very early,” Pisanty said. “The structure, while content-rich, is basically very siloed.”
Although Pisanty was subsequently quick to move into chemistry and computing, his first direct experience with Internet Protocol took place as a master’s student in 1977 while attending a workshop on computational methods at Indiana University in Bloomington. IP itself was only four-years-old at the time, and participants at the workshop were excited to connect to national laboratories at UC Berkeley and the Argonne through a new phenomenon: a computer network.
“It was ARPANET in its very first years,” Pisanty said. “I’m sorry now that I threw away the printouts.”
While at IU, Pisanty also issued a forecast, of sorts.
“They gave us a terminal from Texas Instruments called a Silent 700 – like a very small typewriter with a roll of thermal paper that would connect to the phone by beeps,” Pisanty recalled. “One young student said at her school they were providing these in some dorms, even to people who weren’t in fields that needed computing.
“When I heard that, I said, ‘Gee, computing in your dorm? This could wreck your family life, even if you live alone!’ Man, was that accurate!”
Back at UNAM, the Department of Theoretical Chemistry had recently been formed, starting with only three professors who were creating the specialized program, but Pisanty hitched his wagon to them without hesitation.
“I trusted this team of young professors, which is why I did my masters and PhD here,” he said.
After completing his doctorate in 1983, Pisanty spent two years in a post-doctoral fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Research on the Solid State in Stuttgart, Germany. There, among other things he encountered his first supercomputers.
In 1986, he returned to UNAM as a tenured professor and, except for personal and professional travel, he has worked there ever since. Along with teaching, one of his first projects was joining a committee to recommend whether the university should spend upwards of $10 million on a single supercomputer. In the end, UNAM spent the money, buying the first big Cray Computer in Latin America.
“The expense was approved in large part because it helped university research in many fields,” Pisanty said. “If I buy an upgrade for a telescope, it only serves astronomers. If I buy a second ocean-going ship it only serves oceanographers. The supercomputer served the whole university.”
From there Pisanty went on to a succession of increasingly responsible positions overseeing the university’s computing and networking policies and budget. He became Technical Secretary of the Computing Advisory Council, then Coordinator of Distance Education, and finally his post in charge of Academic Computing Services, which he held until returning to full-time teaching and consulting in 2008.
In those roles and others, he fostered the expansion of computer networks throughout Mexico. Among a long string of contributions – and, once again, ever the bridge builder – he facilitated Internet expansion between the university, government and private enterprise, including the telecommunications monopoly.
“Universities have played a critical role in the development of the Internet – often more than big business, more than the phone company,” Pisanty said.
He was instrumental in stopping moves to put a tax on digital equipment and on Internet access, helping to popularize the slogan “Don’t Mess with the Internet.”.
And Pisanty has been an important player on the international stage. For two decades, Pisanty chaired ISOC in Mexico, and he was a director of ICANN. And he helped lead a movement to stop ACTA, the international property rights treaty that critics fear unduly restricts web freedoms. To date, the Mexican Senate has declined to ratify the country’s participation in ACTA.
Through it all, Pisanty has remained wedded to teaching. Although his schedule as an administrator forced a brief hiatus from the classroom, instruction has been at the core of his professional life.
“Teaching has been a constant for me; it’s like a part of life,” he said, noting that he attended a bilingual school as a boy and began teaching English to young people when he was 17.
“But it’s not enough to be in the ivory tower,” he added. “You legitimize your teaching by your work in related areas – in research, in governance, in field work. That’s where you get fresh ideas in the subjects you teach.”
With Internet growth, of course, have come the concomitant problems of Internet deception and crime, problems to which Pisanty devotes considerable time and thought. He fully acknowledges that the World Wide Web can magnify greatly the impact of criminality – from identity and financial theft to child abuse and disinformation.
But Pisanty is also concerned about proposed solutions that can inhibit the Internet’s potential to help humanity – that by blocking content and creating barriers to entry, the proverbial cure could be worse than the disease.
“Crime is not happening because the Internet is the Wild West,” he said. “Crime is happening because people do evil things to other people. Some of the ‘fixes,’ will actually leave you without an Internet or with a very different Internet. Phishing is simply fraud, so if you want to stop it, find more effective ways to prosecute the criminal, educate users and introduce necessary friction and filtering.”
To this end, Pisanty proposes a series of factors to guide government and law enforcement policies – emphasizing, among other things, the need for transnational cooperation in addressing criminality, while preserving the web’s essential openness.
And he remains at least modestly optimistic that on balance the Internet will bring benefit to humanity.
“I am mostly optimistic that it brings more good than evil. To the degree that I am pessimistic, it’s about humankind, not the technology.”
Outside of work, Pisanty enjoys visiting other countries – being abroad, he said, not the often-arduous process of traveling there.
He has two children from his first marriage, one a physicist, the other a physician with an interest in public health policy. His current wife is from the Gulf coast city of Campeche, an old colonial town known for its walls and baroque architecture, where the couple vacations on a regular basis.
“I’m in shorts and sandals from the moment I arrive,” said Pisanty, who added that he regularly relaxes listening to classical music (though expressing regret that he never learned to play an instrument).
Pisanty’s intellectual curiosity – his interest in learning – carries over to his friendships.
“We have wonderful conversations,” he said. “I love a conversation where you can have anything come up, from gossip to politics, and then suddenly you can see in the air how ideas begin to materialize from different contributions.
“Sometimes, it literally condenses at the end. You weren’t seeing anything, and then abruptly you are.”
When it’s suggested that Pisanty has quite a gift of sight, he demurs. “I have a gift of friends,” he says.
Among those Pisanty counts as friends are such seminal Internet founders as Vint Cerf and Steve Crocker.
“I’ve been fortunate,” he adds, “to have had great opportunities and great teachers.”
And now about to enter his eighth decade, Pisanty says he has no interest in retiring. He talks about an event on supercomputing at UNAM, where he expected to find 25-year-old whiz kids reshaping the world but was surprised to find a lot of key players were much, much older.
“That taught me,” he said, “that you have to stay in shape and keep learning, that you can remain on the cutting edge if you keep on your toes.
“And later I found this guidance in a novel by the British anthropologist Ashley Montagu, who said:
‘The idea is to die young – as late as possible.’”
Written by Dan Rosenheim. Rosenheim was managing editor of The San Francisco Chronicle and vice president/news for KPIX-TV. Retired from full-time work, he is currently business development director for Bay City News and LocalNewsMatters.
