text: Manuel Cardona Castro (7 September 1934 &ndash; 2 July 2014) was a condensed matter physicist. According to the ISI Citations web database, Cardona was one of the eight most cited physicists since 1970. He specialized in solid state physics. Cardonas main interests were in the fields of: Raman scattering (and other optical spectroscopies) as applied to semiconductor microstructures, materials with tailor-made isotopic compositions, and high T' superconductors, particularly investigations of electronic and vibronic excitations in the normal and superconducting state.