We make an account of the role played by the Brazilian physicist Sergio Porto (1926-1979) in the development of laser applications, in particular to Raman effect, and in the introduction of the laser research in Brazil. We make a short biographical note on Porto, covering the period between 1959 to 1979, which includes his stay in the US at the Bell Laboratories and at the University of Southern California, when his professional career rocketed, and his return to Brazil, invited by Minister Reis Velloso, to the newly founded Unicamp. We also discuss the variety of his contributions to laser applications in fields such as medicine, isotopic separation, and communications. Finally we remark that his wide international recognition has no counterpart in a similar recognition in Brazil and we try to conjecture an explanation for these different prestige
laser in Brazil; Sergio Porto; history of physics in Brazil; history of science in Brazil; social history of Brazilian science
