Lluís Santaló was born in Girona on 9 October 1911 in the bosom of a family of great pedagogic reputation. At 16 years old, he went to Madrid to study at the Faculty of Mathematics. He obtained his degree in 1934 and, with the help of professor Julio Rey Pastor, traveled to Hamburg to work with W. Blaschke in geometric probabilities, thus initiating himself in what would be known as Integral Geometry. He completed his dissertation in 1936.

Since his birth he was affected of paralysis, and he was a self-taught person in scientific matters. He started his scientific research with a sequence work that was published in “Comptes Rendus” of the Académie des Sciences of Paris.