Born in Santarem (Portugal) in 1925, Joaquim Veríssimo Serrão is one of the most important researchers and scholars of Portuguese history, an outstanding medievalist and author of a great number of works on the XIII to XVII centuries and the role played by the Portuguese in Europe in that period.

After six years as reader at the University of Toulouse, Veríssimo Serrão obtained his doctorate from the University of Coimbra and began a phase of research which has still not come to an end. In 1967 he was appointed as director of the Portuguese Cultural Centre which the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation had created in Paris, staying five years at the head of that centre. Among his most outstanding works are the "Historia do Portugal", which began to be published in 1977, and various works on his specialised field (the history of universities), as well as the "Itinerário do Rei Dom Sebastián". Dr. Veríssimo Serrão has been decorated in his own country with the National Order of the Cruzeiro do Sul, the Gold Medal of the City of Santarem and the rank of Commander of the Order of Public Instruction of Portugal.