Born in Mexico City, he studied at UNAM in Mexico City, graduating in physics in 1965. In 1971 he obtained a PhD in physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. After a year's post-doctoral work at the University of Frankfurt (1972) and another at the Physikalisches Institut of the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen in Aachen (1973) he returned to UNAM in Mexico as an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Physics, where he has remained since then, being made full professor in 1984.