Today’s Google Doodle celebrates Argentine novelist, painter, and atomic physicist Ernesto Sábato, who gave himself to literature and became a standout amongst Argentina’s most regarded writers.

Who was Ernesto Sábato?

Born in a small town close Buenos Aires on this day in 1911, Ernesto Sábato studied and acquired a PhD at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, and after that earned a scholarship to study cosmic radiation nearby researchers splitting uranium atoms at the Curie Institute in Paris. After proceeding with his investigations at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he came back to Argentina.

During his time in Europe, Ernesto Sábato’s interactions with surrealists such as Wilfredo Lam and André Bretón mixed philosophical inquiries in his mind, which in the long run led him to direct his concentrate far from science and rather give himself to literature.

While teaching at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, he started adding to the newspaper La Nación, expressing political perspectives that prompted him losing his teaching post. His 1948 novel El túnel (interpreted as The Tunnel or The Outsider) was the first to acquire him international acclaim.

Every one of the three of Ernesto Sábato’s novels have been translated into in excess of 30 languages. There may have been more, yet Ernesto Sábato had a habit of burning his manuscripts. “It may be because I considered that all my work was imperfect, impure, and I found that fire was purifying,” he once said. He nearly burned his second novel Sobre héroes y tumbas (On Heroes and Tombs) after working on it for a long time. His wife persuaded him to alter his perspective, and the work is widely viewed as one of his masterpieces.

In 1984, Ernesto Sábato got the renowned Cervantes Prize in acknowledgment of his literary achievements. Beside honor winning novels, Ernesto Sábato’s articles on political issues propelled changes in his homeland, leading some to call Ernesto Sábato “la voz de la conciencia Argentina,” or “the voice of Argentina’s conscience.”

Ernesto Sabato died in Santos Lugares, on April 30, 2011, two months short of his 100th birthday.