Biography|Carlos Slim — The Ciudad Universitaria Faculty Where the Engineer Taught Algebra

The nickname stuck because it was accurate. Mexicans still call Carlos Slim Helú El Ingeniero.

He entered the Facultad de Ingeniería of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in 1957 as part of the generation that year, and he read civil engineering on this campus.

The faculty had only just moved south. Construction of Ciudad Universitaria began in 1954.

The Escuela Nacional de Ingeniería transferred here between 1954 and 1956, so Slim never sat the old downtown classrooms as an undergraduate.

CNN dates the degree to 1961. Expansión repeats that year.

A later professional cédula search has been cited for 1964, which in Mexico can mean the date the title was registered, not the year the courses ended.

While he was still a student he taught algebra and linear programming in the same faculty.

Radio Fórmula, Infobae and Fundación UNAM all record the double role.

The thesis he presented was Aplicaciones de Programación Lineal a algunos problemas de Ingeniería Civil, dedicated to his father, Julián Slim Haddad.

Diego Osorno's biography reports a last chapter on electronic calculators that could add, subtract, multiply and divide at startling speed. That is Osorno's account of the document, not a line to put in Slim's mouth here.

The Civil and Geomatic Engineering Division still lists him among its noted alumni.

The buildings sit on Circuito Exterior in Coyoacán, between the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Administration, inside a campus UNESCO inscribed in 2007.

He would incorporate Inversora Bursátil four years after the degree, in 1965, and Inmobiliaria Carso in January 1966.

The engineer came first. The holding company took its name from Carlos and Soumaya only after the classrooms on this circuit had already given him a title.

Photo: entrance of the Facultad de Ingeniería, UNAM, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: Imperio Reséndiz, Presidencia de la República, public domain.