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Eduardo Matos Moctezuma’s (Mexico City, 1940) found his passion for archeology through a book: Gods, Graves and Scholars, by C. W. Ceram, a popular science text that unveiled the archaeological secrets of great civilizations.

At the beginning of the 1960s he began to work in the excavations of Tlatelolco, under the direction of archaeologist Francisco González Rull. Later, in 1978, he took over the coordination of the Templo Mayor Project, after opposing the reconstruction of the temple to favor the conservation of the ruins as witnesses of the violent encounter between two cultures. In recognition of his work on this project, Time magazine named him “Moctezuma III”.

Since then, he has published books such as Teotihuacán: The City of Gods (1990), Life and Death in the Templo Mayor (1995), Las piedras negadas: de la Coatlicue al Templo Mayor (1998) and Estudios mexicas (2006), which are among hundreds of books, theses and studies dedicated to the research and dissemination of this matter written by him and his collaborators.

Throughout his career he has served as president of the Archeology Council and director of the National Museum of Anthropology and History, among many others. He has been awarded the National Prize for Arts and Sciences in the field of History, Social Sciences and Philosophy (2007), and the Premio Crónica (2017). In the year 2017, Harvard University inaugurated a chair with his name, making him the first Mexican to receive such a distinction.