Biography

Alberto Martinez was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he grew up. He did his bachelor’s degree at the University of Puerto Rico, where his father was a professor of finance, while his mother worked as an economist for the government. 

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After graduating, Martinez taught Spanish at Vassar College, where he took additional courses on philosophy and physics. Studying Einstein’s special relativity, Martinez carried out an interdisciplinary Master’s degree at NYU, on philosophy of physics. He studied relativity with Engelbert Schücking, a student of Werner Heisenberg. Martinez wrote a Master’s thesis on the concept of simultaneity from Newton’s physics to Einstein’s special relativity. His advisor was Martin Tamney (CUNY), and the readers were Scott MacPartland (NYU), and Daniel Greenberger (CUNY).

 

Next, Martinez carried out a Ph.D. in History of Science at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis. He focused on history of physics, with a minor in philosophy of science. His dissertation analyzed the evolution of kinematics leading to Einstein’s relativity of 1905. His advisor was Roger Stuewer and his dissertation readers were Michel Janssen, Alan Shapiro, Robert W. Seidel, and Geoffrey Hellmann.    

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Completing his Ph.D. in January 2001, Martinez became a Research Fellow at the Dibner Library for the History of Science, at The Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. Then, from 2001-2003, he became a Fellow at the Dibner Institute for History of Science at M.I.T., and a Fellow at Harvard University’s Department of History of Science, sponsored by Erwin Hiebert. In 2003-2004, Martinez worked as an editor for the History of Recent Science and Technology project, at M.I.T., under Silvan S. Schweber. He was also a Fellow at the Center for Einstein Studies at Boston University, in the office of John Stachel, founding Editor of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein.   

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In 2004-05, Martinez was the Weismann Instructor in History of Science at Caltech. Co-teaching a course on the replication of famous historical experiments, with Jed Buchwald, led Martinez to carry out a successful replication of the famous experiment by Charles Coulomb, of 1785, which established the fundamental law of electrostatics.

 

In 2005, Martinez moved to UT Austin, to become a Lecturer in the History Department. He was promoted to Assistant Professor in 2008, Associate Professor in 2010, and full Professor in 2015.

 

In 2014, he created an undergraduate Certificate Program in History and Philosophy of Science. In 2023-24 he served as Chair of the Forum on History and Philosophy of Physics of the American Physical Society.

Works

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Professor Martinez has analyzed the roots of Einstein's special relativity theory since the 1990s. Einstein’s 1905 relativity paper is the most famous paper in physics. Yet its readers were confused by his derivation of its key equations. Even decades later, experts who analyzed it didn’t understand it, such as John Stachel, Roberto Torretti, G.H. Keswani, Karl Stiegler, and Arthur I. Miller. They mistakenly claimed that Einstein used four coordinate systems, that some were pseudo-Galilean, that his equation x' = x – vt  was a transformation, and that his derivation involved variations in the speed of light. Such claims were mistaken. Hence, 99 years after 1905, Martinez published the first correct explanation of Einstein’s original derivation, in American Journal of Physics (2004). Martinez also published an expanded analysis in book, Kinematics: The Lost Origins of Einstein’s Relativity (Johns Hopkins, 2009). 

A top Einstein scholar, Professor Jürgen Renn, noted: “Martínez can certainly take credit for having produced by far the best and most detailed account of this important strand in Einstein's early work.”

Meanwhile, for decades, several writers and historians increasingly claimed that Einstein’s relativity of time originated because of thoughts he allegedly had about clock towers in Bern, Switzerland. Such stories were advanced by prominent Harvard professors, such as Steven Pinker and Peter Galison, and have been spread by well-known physicists such as Michio Kaku and Hans Ohanian, and bestselling biographers such as Walter Isaacson. In 2003, the top historian of physics at Harvard University, Professor Peter Galison, published a provocative book arguing that Einstein had discovered the relativity of time thanks to his job analyzing patent applications and his thoughts about synchronizing Swiss clock towers. Consequently, at Boston University, Martinez analyzed whether such claims were true, by inspecting hundreds of primary sources in the Einstein Archive and the Center for Einstein Studies. To the contrary, Martinez found that all such stories are false. In his writings, Einstein himself never claimed that clock towers inspired him to think of the relativity of time. The multiple explanations he gave, instead, were quite different. None of his friends, relatives, coworkers, or acquaintances claimed that he was inspired by Swiss clocks or towers either. Martinez published his findings in Physics World (2003), and in Physics in Perspective (2004), and later, in his book, Science Secrets (2011). 
 

Another important branch of history physics is the replication of experiments. In 1785, Coulomb did one of the most famous experiments in history, showing that the force between electrified bodies has the same form as Newton’s law of gravity. Strangely, for 200 years, physicists failed to reproduce Coulomb’s results. Thus, in 1992, Peter Heering argued that Coulomb had not really discovered the Law with his experiment. It was shocking, since countless physics textbooks teach Coulomb’s Law. The American Journal of Physics praised Heering’s work as one of the best papers of the year. However, in 2005, Martinez replicated Coulomb’s experiment at Caltech. He proved that Coulomb’s results were not fake. 

In ISIS, a top journal on history of science, David Knight praised it: “Martínez has actually been able to repeat it: replications of long-past experiments are tricky, so that vindication is worth celebrating.” 

In history of mathematics, Martinez made several breakthroughs. For centuries, since Cardano’s Ars Magna, mathematicians have taught minus times minus is plus — as a logical consequence of the laws of algebra. Mathematicians who tried to formulate an alternative all failed. In his first book, Negative Math (Princeton, 2005), Martinez analyzed the history of negative numbers, focusing on the role of conventions in algebra. Surprisingly, Martinez explained Euler’s algebra of imaginary numbers, which had been misunderstood and criticized as contradictory for 200 years. Moreover, Martinez formulated a coherent algebra in which multiplication with different signs is non-commutative, introducing symmetries missing in traditional algebra. 

Consequently, the review in American Scientist stated: “Martínez shows that it’s possible to construct a fully consistent system of arithmetic in which minus times minus makes minus. It’s a wonderful vindication...”

Meanwhile, popular stories on the internet increasingly claimed that Einstein’s first wife, Mileva Marić, was his secret collaborator. Public interest in this conjecture seemed to peak in 2003, when Public Broadcasting stations worldwide aired the television documentary and website, “Einstein’s Wife,” claiming that Mileva Marić was the coauthor of Einstein’s famous works of 1905, with a poll showing that 75% of respondents agreed. Consequently, Martinez carried out research to analyze the claim, and he found, to the contrary, that the claim was based on mistranslations and non-existent sources. Hence Martinez published articles, in Physics World (2004) and in School Science Review (2005), showing that the allegations were false, because of primary sources: some showing that translations were false and others showing that Mileva Marić herself gave credit to Albert Einstein. Most importantly, Martinez showed that when Einstein himself wrote, in 1901, that he wanted Mileva to complete with him “our work on the relative motion,” he meant a theory in which the Earth moves relative to the invisible ether, that is, not his theory of relativity of 1905. John Stachel, founding editor of Einstein’s Collected Papers, praised Martinez’s article, “Handling Evidence in History,” as a “small masterpiece” in historical methodology. 

In 2005, the centenary of Einstein’s famous works of 1905, Martinez presented an invited talk on Mileva Marić for the “Einstein-Jahr” hosted by the Universität Bern, in Bern, Switzerland. In subsequent years, Martinez has written additional articles about Marić and Einstein, including in his book Science Secrets (2011) and in Sloan Science & Film (reviewing the Einstein docudrama on National Geographic). Martinez served as a manuscript reviewer for M.I.T., in the evaluation and production of the book, Einstein's Wife: The Real Story of Mileva Einstein-Marić, by Allen Esterson and David C. Cassidy. In 2018, Martinez also published a review, in Physics in Perspective, of Marie Benedict’s bestselling book, The Other Einstein: A Novel, detailing the mistakes and fictions in the story. 

Having pinpointed multiple myths about Einstein, Martinez proceeded to analyze other myths in the history of science and mathematics. His book, Science Secrets: The Truth about Darwin's Finches, Einstein's Wife, and Other Myths (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), analyzes how historical myths develop in the sciences. For example, Martinez showed that Galileo did not drop objects from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, that Darwin was not influenced by finches to formulate his theory of evolution (thus confirming the research of Frank J. Sulloway), and that Albert Einstein, in old age, did not believe in God, contrary to widespread claims by popular writers such as Walter Isaacson. 

Science Secrets was selected to be the “flagship” book on history and philosophy of science of the University of Pittsburgh Press, so it was featured on page 1 of their 2011 catalog. Physics in Perspective praised it as “fascinating and thought provoking .... he succeeds admirably.” It was an Editor's Pick in Choice and it was a 2011-12 Bestseller in History of Science in YBP Library Services.

In 2012, Martinez published a sequel to Science Secrets, namely, a book about the evolution of myths in the history of mathematics, titled: The Cult of Pythagoras: Math and Myths (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012). In it, Martinez dissected multiple well-known stories, such as: Did Pythagoras prove the hypotenuse theorem? Did his cult murder Hippasus for revealing irrational numbers? Is the Golden Ratio in nature and in ancient architecture? Did the bright boy Gauss add all numbers from 1 to 100? Is mathematics really the language of nature? In these stories, and others, Martinez showed that the answer is negative, and yet, he explained how each story arose, and how such myths disguise our ignorance and conceal history. For example, building on the work of the German classicist Walter Burkert, Martinez shows that Pythagoras was not described as a geometer by ancient writers who discussed mathematics, such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes, Apollonius, and others. Instead, the fictional story that Pythagoras was a great geometer arose more than four centuries after his death, and it evolved slowly, until, nineteen centuries after his death, Pythagoras became misrepresented as having been the first person to prove the “Pythagorean theorem.” 

The historian of mathematics, Jeremy Gray, praised Martinez’s book: “His book will be a natural first port of call for people who like to get this sort of thing right.”  Choice selected it as an “Outstanding Academic Title,” writing: “The author carefully compares sources in order to extract what might be fact; his scholarship is admirable. Every subject needs its history told in a careful and useful manner, and Martinez clearly succeeds in this endeavor.” The Cult of Pythagoras was featured as a “Premium Title” by the Scientific American Book Club, the History Book Club, and the Quality Paperback Book Club. It became the #6 National Bestseller in Mathematics in YBP Library Services, and the #3 Best Book of 2012 on Ancient Philosophy, in Athenaeum Boekhandel Nieuws.
 
When analyzing the history of famous scientific myths, there was an important one that Martinez could not confirm: the widespread and scholarly claim that the Inquisition in Rome did not burn Giordano Bruno for his cosmological beliefs. Therefore, Professor Martinez analyzed astronomy in the Renaissance. He spent seven years inspecting rare books and sources in Italian, Latin, and other languages. Finally, Martinez discovered why the Inquisition condemned Giordano Bruno, why they burned him alive in the year 1600. His death was a longstanding mystery: what were his crimes, his heresies? The Inquisition’s proceedings were secret, and so, for 400 years, writers speculated. Experts claimed that the cause was not Bruno’s semi-Copernican cosmology— expert authorities including The Catholic Encyclopedia, Frances Yates, Steven J. Dick, Michael J. Crowe, Leen Spruit, and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. This denial was a recurrent part of historians’ claims that there existed no major conflict between science and religion. To the contrary, in Rome, Martinez discovered that the main reason why the Inquisition condemned Bruno was his cosmology: his statements about many worlds, that the stars are suns, surrounded by planetary worlds, possibly like Earth, even inhabited. 

In the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, Clifford Cunningham, the prolific historian of astronomy, praised Martinez’s book, Burned Alive: Giordano Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition (Reaktion / Univ. of Chicago, 2018): “An essential text for any future research on Bruno, Galileo and The Inquisition.... it is quite possibly the most important book of the year for the history of astronomy.”

Furthermore, Professor Martinez discovered Galileo’s alleged crimes. For centuries after his condemnation of 1633, many historians speculated: what were his alleged heresies? In his book of 2011, Martinez asked: Did theologians condemn Galileo for defending pagan beliefs? Seven years later, in Burned Alive, Martinez confirmed it. In Rome, he found that Galileo’s strongest critic of 1633, a Jesuit Consultor for the Inquisition, blamed the pagan cult leader Pythagoras as the first to assert “the heresy of the Earth’s motion,” and he denounced Galileo as a “New Pythagorean.” Allegedly Galileo supported the pagan “heresies” of the animated Earth, many worlds, and beings living on the Moon. That unpublished manuscript also identifies the authorities who had condemned such “Pythagorean” heresies: Saint Jerome, Saint Philaster, Saint Augustine, Saint Isidore, three popes, the Fifth Ecumenical Council, and the Roman Inquisition in 1616, 1619, and 1633.

Meanwhile, owing to his two books on historical myths, Professor Martinez noticed, in 2015, that news reports on television and online misrepresented political statements in ways quite similar to distortions that led to historical myths. Major corporate news paraphrased and distorted political statements in misleading, hyperbolic and alarming ways. This led Martinez to write an article for Salon, in which he debunked the widespread claim that presidential candidate Donald Trump said that “all Mexican’s are rapists.” The article quickly earned more than 17,000 shares (deleted years later), which moved Martinez to write additional articles about Trump and the media. Eventually, he expanded and edited his articles into a self-published, nonpartisan book about the corporate American political news media in 2015-16. The book, The Media Versus the Apprentice: The Devil Mr. Trump (2019), exposed substantive failures in the news.

 

Sharyl Attkisson, winner of five Emmy Awards and the Edward R. Murrow Award for investigative, praised this book: “Professor Martinez's dissection is painstaking and the results are critically important.” It became the #1 New Release in Media Studies on Amazon.com. Martinez’s explanations earned millions of viewers, e.g., on Full Measure, on Facebook, and in the documentary “Hoaxed,” a #1 documentary on iTunes in 2020. It features also controversial interviewees, such as Alex Jones and Jordan Peterson, so the documentary was banned from Amazon in April 2020.  

 

Equal Pay

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In 2018, Martinez led a faculty committee that analyzed disparities in faculty salaries and opportunities for leadership positions in UT Austin’s Department of History. He found that no Black or Hispanic faculty had served in any of the 8 leadership positions that were compensated with annual raises or course releases, at least in the period of 17 consecutive years for which data was available, and apparently, in the entire 130-year history of the department. He also showed that seven of the ten faculty members who were clearly underpaid were Hispanic, Black, or Asian. Subsequently, before Martinez could finish his work, his supervisor accused him of: race discrimination, religious discrimination, Title IX discrimination, gender discrimination, and of creating a toxic work environment. Martinez denied all accusations as completely false. Still, certain branches of UT subjected Martinez to multiple protracted investigations and “informal inquiries” that lasted many months, yet they concluded in no policy violations. 

Meanwhile, in 2019, Martinez convened a second committee, the Independent Equity Committee (IEC) consisting of eight full professors who carried out a systematic analysis of faculty compensation and promotions throughout the university. They were, Alberto Martínez (Chair, History), Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra (History), Francisco Gonzalez-Lima (Psychology), Gloria González-López (Sociology), Emilio Zamora (History), Martha Menchaca (Anthropology), Fred Valdez, Jr. (Anthropology), and John Morán González (English). They completed the Hispanic Equity Report, on Oct. 8, 2019, which formally notified UT administrators about disparities that “constitute bias and discrimination against Hispanic employees.” It showed that in Fiscal Year 2016-17, the 47 full-time Hispanic full professors at UT Austin were each paid a mean annual compensation of $25,342 less than the 758 White full professors who were full-time, a difference of –13%. The Report analyzed salaries and curricula vitarum of 90 faculty in the College of Liberal Arts, including 27% of all Hispanic full Professors at UT Austin. Most of the Hispanic professors were paid near the bottom of the pay scales, even though 54% were in the Top 10 most published in their departments. An analysis of covariance with one-tailed hypothesis testing, adjusted for covariates of gender, years employed, and publications, showed that the mean compensation of Hispanic faculty was statistically significantly lower than the mean compensation of White faculty. Contrary to White, Black, and Asian faculty, there was a near zero correlation between the compensation and publications of Hispanic faculty.

On Oct. 18, 2019, UT’s Provost Maurie McInnis (now President of Yale) replied, “by acknowledging the seriousness and urgency of the underlying issues detailed in your report. You are right. Action is needed, and I am committed to working with the campus to do so. The institution faces many faculty-related equity issues. We are aware of the impact on Hispanic faculty and have begun work to address some of the concerns. Much work remains to be done.” She expressed concern and proposed to meet. 

On October 30, 2019, Martinez’s IEC committee met with Provost McInnis, Director of Communications Joey Williams, Senior Vice Provost Tasha Beretvas, Vice Provost Ted Gordon, Dean Charles Martinez, Dean Luis Zayas, and CREED Co-Chairs Richard Reddick and Deborah Parra-Medina. Provost McInnis instructed all Deans to replicate the committee’s work and she allocated funds for salary equity. 
 

On November 3, 2019, the Editorial Board of the Austin American-Statesman, declared: “We urge the university to take this report as a wake-up call and make clear, in words and deeds, that contributions by all faculty are welcome, valued and necessary to UT’s success. That must start with providing Hispanic faculty members equal pay...” On November 11, 2019, at Faculty Council, UT's President Greg Fenves spoke about the Hispanic Equity Report, acknowledging that, “there clearly are inequity issues. This is, sad to say, not the first time we have faced this. We went through this with women’s equity. There had been a study in African American salary equity issues. That has been very important as we’ve addressed these issues over time, and the Latinx faculty are the next ones, is the next phase that we are working on.” On Nov. 15, Provost McInnis wrote: “The very personal experiences you shared with me are unacceptable. Thank you for doing so. I am committed to working on the issues we must address.” And she reiterated her goal of working “with the campus to make real progress.” 

The findings of the Hispanic Equity Report were so disturbing that they were featured in Inside Higher Ed, Yahoo News, MSN, NonProfit Quarterly, Agencia EFE (Spain), Impacto Latino (NY), Alianza News (Miami), Projecto Pulso, Be Latina, three pieces in the Austin-American Statesman, three articles in The Daily Texan, plus 13 other newspapers statewide. The Mexican American Legislative Caucus, the second largest caucus in the Texas Legislature, invited Martinez’s committee to present the Report at the Texas State Capitol. The presentation, on Nov. 22, 2019, was covered by CBS Austin, NBC National News, Univision, Telemundo, FOX San Antonio, NBC San Antonio, Latin Post, The Daily Texan, the San Antonio Current, and Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. Representative Art Fierro told Univision that: “It’s an emergency—the university must do something to make things equitable.” On Nov. 25, Representative Gina Hinojosa, wrote: “I, too, am deeply disturbed by the data which is why I asked President Fenves for a meeting about it a few weeks ago,” and expressed her commitment to solve this problem. 
On January 6, 2020, the third largest newspaper in the United States, the Houston Chronicle, published a front-page article about the gross disparities or discrimination in compensation at UT Austin for Hispanic faculty. And on January 22, the Editorial Board of the Houston Chronicle joined the Editors of the Austin American-Statesman, by publishing another Editorial stating that the disparities against Hispanic faculty at UT Austin are “Unacceptable.” 

On Feb. 17, 2020, Martinez submitted a third analysis to UT's President and Provost, showing that in 2018-19 the mean salary gap for Hispanic full professors, campus-wide, was –$16,729 compared to White full professors, controlling for fields. White professors were paid 12% more. These differences were statistically significant, as shown by a T-Test pairwise comparison which gave the p-value = 0.01. Worse, UT Austin provided IRRIS data charts to Representative Hinojosa, showing that in contrast to White full professors, Hispanic full professors had lower salaries for 9 consecutive years (2010-18), an average of 12% less per year. 

Representatives at the Texas State Legislature inquired further about unequal pay at UT. Representative Eddie Rodriguez contacted President Fenves to discuss the disparities. Rodriguez told the Houston Chronicle that the Report is “quite compelling, particularly the disparity in pay.” Representative Mary González, of the Appropriations Committee, repeatedly contacted UT about the gap in salaries. In response, the Provost’s Office sent her a document by McInnis addressed to the Deans, stating that $3 Million was allocated for equity raises, as if these funds would be used to remedy the Hispanic salary gap.

 
On February 18, 2020, Martinez’s IEC group met with President Fenves, Provost McInnis, and Chief of Staff, Carlos Martinez. President Fenves had discussed equity for Hispanic faculty with State Representatives at the Capitol, and he acknowledged that, “We know we have a problem with equity. We’ve had it for a long time.” Provost McInnis acknowledged, “We have salary equity problems, mostly at the level for full [Professors], and also Associates.” Martinez asked President Fenves in writing and in person whether he had objections to the analyses, and Fenves replied: “I agree with you.” On February 21, President Fenves convened another meeting with Martinez’s committee, the Provost, UT’s CREED council, and attended also by Carlos Martinez, Vice Provost Gordon, Vice Provost Beretvas, and other administrators. Discussing the Hispanic Equity Report, President Fenves acknowledged “very serious systemic problems across the university.” President Fenves admitted “these are failures of the institution,” but that “I’m committed to making these changes, we absolutely have to do it.” 

Suddenly, however, Provost McInnis and President Fenves announced that they would both resign from UT. Subsequently, UT’s Deans and its Interim Provost distributed $1.7 million of the funds allocated by former Provost McInnis for raises. However, 82% of such funds were given to non-Hispanic faculty, thus preserving the salary disparities that Martinez’s committee had identified. On August 30, 2020, Martinez’s committee formally reminded UT’s Interim President, Jay Hartzell, of the disparities that needed to be solved. However, President Hartzell chose to not reply. That led nine Hispanic professors, including Martinez, to file formal complaints of discrimination at the EEOC and the U.S. Department of Labor. 

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Martinez's initiatives for equal pay gained him distinction in the university. In 2019, he was honored to be nominated for the Civitatis Award, UT’s highest service award, by 107 faculty and administrators, including a Vice Provost, Vice Presidents, Deans, Associate Deans, chairs, and directors in over forty departments and centers. In 2020, UT faculty elected Martinez to be a member of the Executive Committee of Faculty Council.

 

There, Martinez was the lead author of a report asking President Hartzell to “Support American Ethnic Studies,” seeking to restore or increase funding for AADS, CMAS, MALS, IUPRA, NAIS, LRI, CAAS, AGBS, and the Warfield Center. Also, Martinez redirected the FCEC to author legislation to support students with a COVID-19 Pass-Fail option after such an option had initially been denied. That work won him a Pillar Award for Leadership from the Texas Trail Blazers, in December 2020.

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When UT faculty voted to elect the members of the Provost Search Committee (2020-21), among 3,000 faculty, Martinez was the only male professor elected in the entire university, and also the only person of color elected. (Still, non-elected members were appointed directly.) Similarly, in 2020, when UT's faculty in the College of Liberal Arts. voted for the members of the Liberal Arts Diversity and Inclusion Task Force, Martinez was the only male full professor elected from the entire College. Hence he coauthored the College's Diversity and Inclusion Five-Year Plan.

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In 2021, Martinez was honored to receive the Leadership and Service Award from UT’s Hispanic Faculty and Staff Association (HFSA). Afterward, in 2021, the HFSA consulted him as they produced their Hispanic Staff Equity Report. It found that Hispanic staff at UT were underpaid in 20 job categories. It concluded: “the university currently operates in a manner that leads to a discriminatory effect on Hispanic staff.” Five months later, President Hartzell announced $50 million in raises for faculty and staff. 

In 2023, the U.S. Department of Labor issued right-to-sue letters to all nine faculty who had filed complaints of pay discrimination. Finally, in December 2023, Martinez and Emilio Zamora filed a class action lawsuit for pay discrimination against UT Austin. They are represented by the law firms of Robert Notzon and Robert W. Schmidt. 

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In 2024, UT Austin eliminated all of its programs on equity, diversity and inclusion. Longstanding groups, such as the Hispanic Faculty and Staff Association, were excluded from operating on campus.   

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The Eyes of Texas song

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The Eyes of Texas is one of the most famous American university songs in the United States. In 2021, Martinez solved a longstanding controversy about its origins.

For decades, some students and faculty had complained that the song had racist roots. For example, in 2009 a national ABC News article reported that some UT students “boycott the song” because it was first performed at a minstrel show, in blackface, and was linked to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Likewise, in 2020, UT student athletes demanded that they should not be obligated to sing the racist song, and that it should be replaced. Afterward, UT football players complained of receiving death threats for their statement, and that UT administrators had conveyed “a threat” from rich donors: that they would never work in Texas if they did not stay on the football field for the song.

 
In March 2021, a UT faculty committee, appointed by President Hartzell, released an official Report about the song. It claimed that the The Eyes of Texas song had no racist intent and was not written for a 1903 event in which students painted their faces black to sing the song.

 

Still, many students publicly opposed the song. E.g., on March 12, the Black Student Athlete Alliance and UT’s Student Government issued a public statement reiterating their belief that The Eyes of Texas “originated with racist intent” and that the song should be removed.  

 
Analyzing UT’s Report, Professor Martinez noticed that it did not answer recurring questions. Did the song’s title originate from words by Confederate General Robert E. Lee? Was it somehow derived from the history of slavery? Did the song’s author write it for an event in which UT students sang it while mocking Black people? Who were the first persons to sing it? 

 

Intrigued by such omissions, Martinez researched the song’s origins. He made the following discoveries:

 

(1) The author of the song, John Lang Sinclair, admitted that he wrote it for a blackface minstrel show.  (2) The song’s title stemmed from words by and about General Lee in the Civil War, on May 6, 1864, as reported by three Confederate soldiers.  (3) The song copied lyrics from a song about the forced labor of Black prisoners.  (4) It was first sung at UT’s first blackface minstrel show, on May 12, 1903, by multiple UT students wearing blackface, imitating Black men working on a railroad. Martinez published these findings on March 24, 2021.

 
On March 29, at the Texas State Capitol, the Black Caucus of Texas Representatives and Senators stated that their opposition to The Eyes of Texas is “unequivocal.” At that event, Martinez presented his findings, and the Presidents of the Texas NAACP, Austin NAACP, and Houston NAACP also denounced UT’s retention of the song. 

On March 31, UT’s Black student leaders in the Black Presidents Leadership Council wrote to UT’s President Jay Hartzell that since UT’s Report’s was defective, they had endured “hours being gaslit, our intelligence being disrespected, and our time being wasted.” Hartzell announced that students would not be required to sing the song. However, UT administrators subsequently announced that all members of UT’s Longhorn Band would be required to play the song. Otherwise, they would be removed from the band. Meanwhile, student tour guides complained that their workplace included a plaque with the song’s lyrics. So, on May 1st, they started boycotting their jobs. That same day, Martinez published a long article enumerating problems and students’ various objections against the song. Contrary to UT’s Report, Martinez showed that, by 1920, the song was considered so “vulgar” and “not dignified” that a faculty committee banned the song. He showed that the song continued to be sung in blackface for six decades, until 1964. 

On May 11, UT’s student reps sent a formal letter to President Hartzell requesting: “The Senate of College Councils officially calls on the University to abolish ‘The Eyes of Texas’ in all University programming.” At the end of July, at least the one plaque with the song was removed, so some student tour guides returned to their jobs. In September 2021, Martinez published a third research article about the song; he revealed how white alumni had labored to hide the racist origins of The Eyes of Texas song, and how they had confected fictional stories to whitewash the song’s history. For example, Martinez found that the author of the song, John Lang Sinclair, had threatened to sue another alumnus for misrepresenting the song’s origins and for forgery.

Despite many complaints, UT’s President retained the song, as desired also by UT’s Board of Regents. Consequently, the President of the Texas NAACP, Gary Bledsoe, filed a federal civil rights complaint of discrimination against UT at the U.S. Department of Education, on behalf of students, including athletes, Band members, and student tour guides, who objected to the song and endured discrimination, including threats, lost income, and other disadvantages. In the complaint, Martinez explained the racist roots in the song’s history along with students’ various complaints.

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For his labors on The Eyes of Texas song, UT's Student Government issued a Commendation to Professor Martinez, on March 7, 2023.

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APS Fellow

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In 2021, Alberto Martinez was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society, an honor awarded each year to less than half of 1% of the 49,500 APS members. The prestigious recognition includes the citation: “For pioneering research and masterful writing on the history from antiquity to modern times, of kinematics and the origins of special relativity, and on significant episodes, paradoxes, and puzzles in the history of physics and allied sciences.”​

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Other Notes

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In 2013, Martinez opposed the UT's "Shared Services" plan to eliminate 500 staff jobs plus displace 300 staff to a distant campus. Martinez showed that the projected savings of $30 million were false, in Faculty Council, in campus events, in the Austin American-Statesman, The Daily Texan, and the Austin Chronicle. Martinez  revealed that the plan was confected by persons linked to the firm Accenture, in a conflict of interests, as he showed in Faculty Council and The Daily Texan. Months later, the UT System’s Audit Office confirmed that UT Austin did violate conflict of interest policies in hiring Accenture. In 2016, UT’s new Chief Financial Officer eliminated Shared Services, because it did not produce “the savings and efficiencies initially anticipated,” as Martinez had predicted.

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In 2018, Martinez  advocated that UT should enroll more disadvantaged students and especially Black students. One year later, UT’s Board of Regents created a $160,000,000 endowment to help disadvantaged students enroll in UT.

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In 2018, Martinez was the first writer to publicly denounce Puerto Rico’s Secretary of Education for corruption on national news. The FBI arrested her a year later.

 

Also in 2018, Martinez analyzed mortality rates caused by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. He pointed out errors in the studies by researchers at Harvard and George Washington University, and echoed by the government of Puerto Rico. 

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In 2019, Martinez helped UT's Libraries Task Force by providing analyses of institutional funding, lack of growth, and FTEs, for professors Jennifer Ebbeler and Stephennie Mulder, which they praised as “absolute gold” and “absolutely amazing,” and helpful for the Provost’s 2019 decision to raise the Libraries Budget by $2.7 million after a protracted decade of stagnation. 

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In 2022, architect Juan Miró and Alberto Martinez advocated to create humane living conditions in Austin for UT students who live in windowless rented rooms that should be illegal and are illegal in cities such as New York, Chicago, and Mexico City. Their efforts have been successful: Austin City Council plans to eliminate windowless rooms in the city.

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