Dr. Antoni Cambrodí Aldomà, was born in Les Borges Blanques (Lleida) in 1910 and died in Santiago de Chile in 1994 while participating in an International Congress on Intellectual Disabilities.
Bachelor of Medicine (Barcelona), Diplomat in Child Care (Paris) and Doctorate in Paediatrics (Madrid), he developed his professional activity as a Paediatrician in Lleida for more than 40 years.
He dedicated his efforts to the study of intellectual disability and to the care and psychological rehabilitation of children and young people with disabilities. He coordinated the “Cambrodí System”, which consists of 3 major elements: an evolutionary theory, some instruments for competence evaluation and proposals for educational application.
He structured his own method of assessment and data collection to assess the children he cared for and who presented some kind of disability, he kept a regular monitoring for years and scientifically interpreted the results, with the help of technicians in statistics, etc.
This led him to publish some “Principles of Psychology of the Mentally Retarded” and to structure an explanatory theory: “Deficiency Process”. This involved reviewing and adapting its “Dimensional Method” of skills assessment. Finally, he took those proposals to the educational application with the development of “Psychopedagogical Programs”, which were applied in various special Education Centers.
He was also involved in advising affected families and in the orientation of professionals caring for these children.
He was Director of the School of Social Workers of Lleida, Member of the Spanish Society of Psychology, “Laus Honoris Causa” by the Piaget Institute of Portugal and was acknowledged for his scientific work with the Silver Medal of the City of Lleida.
He was a professor of psychology at the School of Social Assistants in Lleida and taught courses in Tarragona, Barcelona, Madrid, Lleida, El Ferrol, Lisbon … he participated in various meetings, conferences, courses, seminars and congresses, both national and international.
He published 11 books, the first in 1965, “Different children” and the last two in 1993, the current Dimensional Method Cambrodí (with Joan Gracia and M. Teresa Mercadé) and Systematic Observation Scales (with Silvia Sastre). In addition to editing numerous articles and papers in different publications and magazines.
