Spanish technician and economist born in Malaga.

In the seventeen eighties he worked in mining affaires, and he was pensioned by the Ministry of Finance to further his study at the then famous Schemnitz School of Mines in Hungary. It was one of the most advanced centres in Europe in the mining and metallurgical field, activities that had a vital importance for the Spanish Crown.

In 1788, after the death of Juan de la Fuente and the departure of José de Betancourt and Antonio Álvarez, Juan López de Peñalver joined the group of Spanish scholars in Paris.

Between 1788 and 1791 Peñalver works enthusiastically in the formation of the Royal Cabinet of Machines and completes his scientific training at the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées. To him we owe the designs contained in the Royal Cabinet on mining drainage called water column.

Betancourt and Peñalver, before leaving France, wrote Memoria sobre los medios de facilitar el comercio interior... (Report on ways to facilitate internal trade...), dated in Paris on June 20th, 1791. It discusses the importance of roads and canals for the development of trade and the cheapening of freight transport, both authors propose the establishment of tolls based on the weight of the carriage and the width of the wheels.

Before leaving Paris, Peñalver is commissioned to join a group of French scientists who had been appointed to carry out measurements of a meridian arc on Spanish soil, led by Jean Baptiste Delambre and Pierre Méchain. His participation, along with the Spanish mathematician Joseph Chaix, credited him, at that moment, as a remarkable physicist.

Peñalver joined the Royal Cabinet of Machines of Madrid in early 1793, after the completion of the scientific mission related with the measurements of the meridian. The increasing absence of Betancourt due to his work trips and industrial espionage made Peñalver increasingly assume more responsibilities in the life of the Cabinet, ending up being responsible for it, and in 1794 he published the Catálogo del Real Gabinete de Máquinas. Years later, in 1797, he began the Descripción de las Máquinas de más general utilidad que hay en el Gabinete de ellas, establecido en el Buen Retiro, (Description of the Machines of more general utility in the Cabinet of them, established at the Buen Retiro) publishing four monographs.

In 1802, Betancourt elected him as a professor at the School of Roads and Canals. He was also his closest collaborator at the Royal Cabinet of Machines, where they taught the practical classes.

In 1807, before Betancourt began to organize his trip to Russia, Peñalver was appointed director of the Canal Imperial of Aragon and began to deal with the internal grain trade and the economic issues associated with it. Peñalver outstood as a notable economist and to him we owe the publication in 1812 of a monograph entitled Reflexiones sobre la variación del precio del trigo (Reflections on the variation in the price of wheat) , a work in which he proposes, with the help of a solid mathematical formulation, the determination of the upper and lower limits between where the price of wheat could vary without causing undesirable and harmful effects.

Peñalver survived for years as he could in a difficult Spain. When the School of Engineers of Roads and Canals reopened in 1821, he rejoined it for the brief period it was open (1821 - 1823).

In 1824, Fernando VII created in Madrid the Royal Conservatory of Arts, an institution that recollected the remains that had not perished in the Royal Cabinet of Machines, appointing Juan López de Peñalver as the Director, a position he held until his death in 1835.

Peñalver devoted an important part of his activity to the translation of foreign works into Spanish, such as Letters to a German Princess on various topics in physics and philosophy of the great mathematician Euler. The Spirit of the Laws, the emblematic work of Montesquieu. Or A Circumstantial Narrative of the Campaign in Russia in 1812 by Labaume.