  In the first decade of the 20th century, the Universidad Nacional de La
Plata, founded in 1905, created a modern and well-equipped Physics Institute.
In this paper we study the impact that this initiative had on the modernisation
of physics teaching at secondary and university level in Argentina. We focus on
two of the most representative graduates of the Institute in those years, Ramon
G. Loyarte and Enrique Loedel Palumbo, and analyse their most important
pedagogical works and the public reception they received. These works are a
sample of the contribution of the Institute of Physics to the raising of the
level of national education in the field of physical sciences in the first half
of the 20th century.
