Amable Liñán Martínez was born in Loceda (León) on November 27, 1934.

He holds a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Madrid. Between 1962 and 1963, he pursued studies in aeronautical engineering as a NASA-ESRO Fellow at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he earned the title of Aeronautical Engineer. Since 1965, he has served as Professor of Fluid Mechanics at the School of Aeronautical Engineering in Madrid.

His has been a life dedicated to aeronautics around the world.

Between 1960 and 1976, he worked at the Spanish National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA). His research has focused primarily on fluid mechanics, particularly on reacting fluid dynamics and combustion. He has served as principal investigator or associate researcher on numerous basic combustion research projects funded by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the European Research Office of the U.S. Army, and the U.S. Forest Service.

He has also collaborated on research projects funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Community, and the Institute of Nuclear Studies. He has been a visiting professor at the Universities of California (San Diego), Michigan, Princeton, Paris VI, Marseille, and at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where he held the “Cátedra de América” of the Instituto de España. He has also worked as a guest researcher at the NASA Ames Turbulence Research Center and at Stanford University.

He is a member of the Expert Committee of the COMETT Project, a board member of the Von Kármán Institute for Fluid Dynamics, and serves on the editorial board of several academic journals.

In total, he has participated in 23 research and development (R&D) projects, produced 26 scientific reports, published more than 150 articles in prestigious journals, and presented 251 papers at national and international conferences. He has also published several books in collaboration with other professors and contributed chapters to various books on combustion. He is co-author, with F. A. Williams, of the book Fundamental Aspects of Combustion (Oxford University Press, 1993).

He is a full member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Engineering and a corresponding member of the National Academy of Engineering of Mexico and the Canary Islands Academy of Sciences. He received the Prince of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical Research in 1993 and the Castile and León Award for Scientific and Technical Research in 1995. He was also awarded the Zeldovich Gold Medal by the International Combustion Institute in 1994. In 2005, along with fellow aeronautical engineer and historian Jesús Salas Larrazábal, he received the “Emilio Herrera” Award from the AENA Foundation, in recognition of his long professional career in the field of aeronautics. He has also been awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa by Carlos III University of Madrid and the University of Zaragoza.