Waldyr Alves Rodrigues, Jr. (born at Araraquara, SP, Brazil, on March 14, 1946) obtained his B.Sc. in physics in 1968 at the University of São Paulo (Brazil), where he has been a research student of Mário Schenberg (one of the top Brazilian theoretical physicists) and became an assistant professor in 1969. He then moved to Torino, Italy, where he did postgraduate studies at the Scuola di Perfezionamento in Fisica Nucleare and obtained a degree (equivalent to Ph.D.) in theoretical nuclear physics in 1971. Later that year, he returned to Brazil and became an associate professor at the new Physics Institute of Campinas State University (UNICAMP).