His uncle, the playwright and novelist, Julio Planchart, was a member of the National Academy of History and ambassador of Venezuela in Chile. The home of his grandparents, Enrique Planchart Ruiz and Soledad Loynaz, was a melting pot of culture, knowledge and Venezuelan identity.

... I was lucky of having from the 3rd year of the Baccalaureate to the 2nd year of the University, Ángel Palacio Gros as professor of geometry.

It was an Academic Act of great solemnity, presided over by the Rector Francisco de Venanzi. Without a doubt, this act marks a milestone in the history of Mathematics in Venezuela, it was the first Faculty of Sciences in the country and soon the first Mathematics graduates in Venezuela would graduate.

... in the cafeteria of the Faculty of Humanities, behind Engineering, Raimundo Chela shared a table with several students from the School of Mathematics: José Masón, Federico Martin and myself. We drank coffee, sometimes several, and we talked. ... After jokes, comments about music or poetry and discussing politics (always politics for hours), the conversation would move to Mathematics: Number Theory or Galois Theory, most of the time. Also, frequently, stories and anecdotes about famous mathematicians.

E Cartan proves in his paper: 'Sur la détermination d'un système orthogonal complet dans un espace de Riemann symétrique clos' Ⓣ, that the irreducible unitary representations of the group of isometries G of a Riemannian symmetric space appearing in the space of complex square integrable functions $U_{2}(M)$, are those for which the isotropy group H of a point leaves a vector fixed. He also proves that such a representation appears with multiplicity one. Given the connections between the theory of unitary representations of a Lie group G, and the theory of Ad*-equivariant Hamiltonian actions of G, established in the work of A Kirillov and B Kostant, the question arises as to whether these theorems of Cartan have an analogue in the other theory.

These notes of a course given in Caracas in the 7th Latin American School of Mathematics are a simple introduction to symplectic geometry which can be useful for both physicists interested in an up-to-date presentation of classical mechanics and classical field theory and mathematicians with an interest in the applications of the modern tools of differential geometry to different branches of physics. It is written at the graduate student level, and after a general introduction of the basic definitions and theorems of symplectic geometry, such as for instance the Darboux-Weinstein theorem, as well as their applications to Hamiltonian systems, the author studies symplectic actions of Lie groups and the reduction technique for systems with symmetry. Finally, the last section is devoted to developing the Kirillov-Kostant-Souriau method of the orbits of the coadjoint action.

Man has seen the need to represent the Earth on a flat surface, which is given the name of a geographical chart or map. The problem with making a map of the Earth, or part of it, is to construct a bijection between part of the sphere and a plane. From experience we know that this cannot be done without breaking or deforming the sphere, and here lies the mathematical richness of the problem. We have to sacrifice some property or relationship in the sphere and what we sacrifice depends on what we want to do with the map. Ideally we would like an isometric map, which preserves all distances and geometric properties. Since this is not possible, we can be content with a map that preserves geodesics (a geodesic is the line that marks the shortest path between two points). On the sphere, the geodesics are the arcs of maximum circumference; in the plane, they are the line segments. A map produced by projection from the centre of the Earth onto a tangent plane preserves the geodesics.

Planchart's scientific work was recognised by the Venezuelan Academy of Physical, Mathematical and Natural Sciences, of which he was a Corresponding Member, as well as by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Research (Conicit) which in 1989 awarded him the Prize for Best Scientific Work in Mathematics, and in 1991 an honourable mention for this same award.

The PIO, his masterpiece as a socio-educational aid programme, has been the most important social responsibility programme in the Simón Bolívar University since its inception. This programme is born from the disproportion that the admission statistics of our university had been showing in relation to the proportion of students from public institutions admitted versus institutions from the private sector, reaching a proportion of 96% of students from private institutions in the late 1990s and 4% from the public sector. That was the main motivation for creating the PIO.

Professor Planchart's concern to contribute to improving education in the country originated a tour of more than 150 secondary education institutions located in the states of Miranda, La Guaira and the Capital District, looking for young people who wanted to study scientific-technological careers, and formed a work team that became a family, which not only remains united, but also continues to generate change in the secondary education institutions of the official sector through this programme.

Currently, in the teaching of Mathematics in Venezuela, one of the main problems is the deficiency in the effective application of didactics that allows guaranteeing the success of the teaching-learning processes of Mathematics. This is even more evident in the subject of geometry, which is systematically omitted despite being in the contents of the programmes of the educational levels preceding the higher one. In addition, in recent years in the field of Mathematics Education there have been vertiginous changes that have forced us to review the situation of Mathematics and its teaching at different educational levels.

Given this situation, it seems necessary to promote programmes that respond to the new innovative trends that have been emerging in the field of Mathematics Education, such as, among others, the impact of new technologies, modelling, new evaluation techniques, motivation, methodological changes towards the acquisition of the typical processes of mathematical thought, heuristics (problem solving) as a tool for teaching mathematics, etc. And some trends in mathematical content: a shift towards discrete mathematics, the impact of the content of modern calculation methods, the recovery of geometric thinking and spatial intuition, the rise of random thinking, of probability and statistics.

The University is threatened; the values of the University do not seem shared by those who administer the State in these times; they favour institutions that are not universities, that are training schools for people who are capable of carrying out specific tasks that may seem important at the moment, but who do not have, and will not have, the capacity to continue their self-training, to develop and adapt to changes in the world that are unstoppable.
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the University has to remain open, it is a enormous sacrifice for all, we know. This so-called socialist government has made the university system only for a privileged group, for those who have transportation and can eat three times a day. We will be left with fewer students and fewer teachers, but we have to continue, because the opposite would be to bury the Simón Bolívar University.

Holder has an unfortunate history at the Simón Bolívar University (he was a professor for a term in the nineties), his resumé shows that he has only held managerial positions, not academic ones, he has no thesis students, students or interns, he has no research activities, except for three articles of 1994 that he published when he finished his doctoral thesis. He has no scientific publications, he is not an academic. We explained to the National Council of Universities the academic, not political, reasons why Holder should not be appointed, as well as the community consultation process that produced the candidacies of Óscar González and Solange Issa. They are recognised professors who have the support of the entire University, professors, students, employees and workers.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he helped promptly deliver virtual classes. At all times, he especially supported low-income students. He survived several strokes, without neglecting his duties as rector.

A rigour that perhaps came from his mathematical training, but that beyond analysis and geometry gave him an extraordinary mastery of space and time to be able to develop a strategic vision that allowed him to carry out the many academic aspects he did throughout his life. A strategic thought that in the last years of his life he used for the benefit of the university, delivering his vision of the future until his last breath.

In his messages to the university community, Rector Planchart tried to create awareness among the students about the challenges of the integral development of Venezuela in the framework of the great scientific and technological advances of Humanity and the III and IV Industrial Revolutions. Overcoming the rentier atavism of Venezuelan society was the object of his perennial concern and self-sacrificing pedagogical work. It remains for his colleagues and disciples to follow his legacy in favour of sustainable development and not rent-seeking in Venezuela. His dream of turning our country into a knowledge society in line with the most advanced nations in terms of scientific and technological development is about to come true.

To speak of Professor Planchart, is to speak of a visionary, honest, ethical, responsible, good person, hardworking and very stubborn man, when something was in his head he did not stop until he achieved it. He felt love and passion for the projects he generated.