Two Young Physicists Seemed Destined for Greatness. Two Decades Later, One Shot the Other Dead.

WSJ ^ | December 19, 2025 | Jared Mitovich, Neil Mehta , Deborah Acosta, Douglas Belkin

[Red Badger]

Claudio Neves Valente, the suspect in the Brown and MIT shootings, had flashes of temper; former classmates describe him as confrontational and socially awkward

Twenty-five years ago, two promising physicists graduated from a prestigious science university in Lisbon. On Monday, one gunned the other down at his home outside Boston after firing on a classroom of Brown University undergrads, authorities say.

Claudio Neves Valente, the suspected shooter, once had a bright future. He graduated at the top of his college class, ahead of classmate Nuno Loureiro. But by the time Neves Valente confronted Loureiro at his Brookline, Mass., apartment building this past week, Loureiro’s career had soared while Neves Valente’s withered.

Loureiro was an acclaimed nuclear scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, leading one of its largest labs. Neves Valente had been living in an unassuming home in Miami, far from the academic grandeur for which he’d once seemed destined.

Investigators don’t know why Neves Valente opened fire in the Brown classroom, nor what drove him to target Loureiro. After a six-day manhunt, police found Neves Valente dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a storage unit in New Hampshire Thursday night.

“I don’t think we have any idea why now, or why Brown, why these students, why this classroom. That is really unknown to us,” said Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha at a press briefing.

Neves Valente was born in the Portuguese town of Torres Novas, about 70 miles north of Lisbon. As a teenager, he was selected to represent Portugal at the International Physics Olympiad, according to the Portugal Physics Gazette. The wife of one of his teachers told local media that the teacher considered him his best student.

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TOPICS: Education; Health/Medicine; Science; Society
KEYWORDS: 2convenient; brownuniversity; claudionevesvalente; nevesvalente; nuclearscientists; physics; valente

[Reily]

When I was an undergraduate at VaTech we had a physics TA supposedly “crack up” and be removed. I had him for lab he was notoriously unhelpful and nearly incoherent in answers to questions. Very much like the foreign TAs but he wasn't foreign! One day he was gone “cracked up” was the reason we were given.

[Red Badger]

Schrodinger’s physics student was both alive and dead, until the FBI looked...........

[bunkerhill7]

E = them see scared

[Red Badger]

When I was in tech school in the Marines, I was talking to one of the instructors and what he told me was rather interesting.

He said that the top men in the class usually made horrible techs, and the middle level guys made the best ones.

Asked why, he said that the top guys were usually know-it-alls and would spend all their time ‘theorizing’ a problem to death, where a middle level guy was more pragmatic and would jump right into a problem and try to fix it immediately.

After I graduated and went to the field, I discovered that this was in fact true...........

[Pete Dovgan]

Serious question.

Why shoot the only two conservatives at Brown University study hall if it was a competition with an old peer?

[jcon40]

MIT professor Nuno was on the TAE Fusion board which is involved with the Truth Social Fusion start up.

Coincidence ?

[Red Badger]

It has been reported that he was in the wrong lecture hall. The Physics finals were on a different floor. The students he was attacking were in an economics class...........

[gloryblaze]

To me, it would seem that the “soaring” Valente had a ton of mental issues.

And they simmered and stewed for a l-o-n-g time. Then when his nemesis, whom he regarded as much inferior, landed THE plum prestigious position at MIT, well, that was the straw that broke the camel's brain.

[NorthMountain]

Most people who earn physics degrees find work in some engineering discipline.

[al baby]

Was he also taking flying lessons?

[Pete Dovgan]

Thank you for that information.

[piasa]

Apparently the college kids just had the bad luck of meeting in a room where the MIT prof normally gave his lectures, but it wasn’t known to the killer that the prof didn’t have the usual lecture that day.

[gloryblaze]

... Meow ...

[Reily]

Why would an MIT prof be teaching at Brown? There’s no report he was doing a sabbatical there. IMO the shooter thought he was getting his revenge on Brown U physics by shooting up that classroom for whatever reason. The econ class was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[FlingWingFlyer]

I hadn’t heard that. Thanks for the info. Finally, something is making sense with this Keystone cops fiasco.

[Jeff Chandler]

I’m okay.

[TalBlack]

“…far from the academic grandeur for which he’d once seemed destined.“

Well, it’s like they say: The Draft is the Draft and the NFL is the NFL…

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

In Mister Feynmann, You Must Be Joking Feynmann recounts being told by his senior advisor at MIT that they would not accept him into their Ph.D. program for his own good. He was cressfallen, but his advisor told him he needed wider exposure. Princeton was culturally much different, hence the title of the book. When he got to Princeton, he, and other students, were invited for tea with the department head and his wife. When asked if he wanted milk or lemon with his tea, not ever having had tea before, he blurted out, "Both" in panic. The Department Head's Wife's answer became the title of his memoir.

[Reily]

Has there been any credible information on how the shooter lived in the Miami area? What he did for those 8(?) years?

[Reily]

Has there been any credible information on how the shooter lived in the Miami area? What he did for those 8(?) years?