Humberto Fernández Morán Biography

Humberto Fernández Morán

(Maracaibo, Venezuela, 1924-Stockholm, Sweden, 1999) Venezuelan scientist.Inventor of the diamond blade, he was a pioneer in electron microscopy techniques and decisive in the process of scientific modernization of his country, in which he founded the Venezuelan Institute of Neurology and Brain Research (IVNIC).

Humberto Fernández carried out his first studies between the capital of Zulia, Curaçao and New York.In 1936 he entered the German School of Maracaibo and the following year he left for Germany, where he finished high school at the Schulgemeinde Wichersdorf high school in Sallfeld.At the age of fifteen, he began his medical studies at the University of Munich.During the Second World War, six days before the Normandy landing (1944), in a basement and under low aerial bombardment, he graduated in medicine with Summa cum laude .

The following year he revalidated his degree at the Central University of Venezuela and worked at the Maracaibo Psychiatric Hospital, although not for long time, because he traveled to the United States to specialize in neurology and neuropathology at George Washington University in Washington DC From there he moved to Stockholm in 1947 and worked at the Serafimer Hospital with the neurosurgeon Herbert Olivecrona.He also began his research in electron microscopy in the laboratories of the Nobel Institute of Physics, invited by Professor Manne Siegbahn (Nobel Prize in Physics in 1924) and also at the Institute for Cell Research and Genetics of the Karolinska Institute.

During this period in Sweden he invented the diamond blade for ultramicrotomy (ultra-fine sectioning of biological and metallic materials that allowed to observe subcellular structures) and developed the concept of cryoultramicrotomy (using low temperatures), which later it would lead him to invent the electronic cryomicroscope.He thus managed to observe at an almost atomic level the structure of complex biological (or inanimate) systems in a hydrated state and at very low temperatures, which until then was considered unlikely.In his work The diamond blade for ultrafine sectioning , published in 1953, Fernández Morán signed as a researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and at the Department of Biophysics of the Central University of Venezuela, of whose chair he was founder in 1951.In Stockholm he married the Swedish Anna Browallius, with whom he would have two daughters.In 1954 he returned to Venezuela.

That same year, with the help of the then Minister of Health Pedro Gutiérrez Alfaro, Fernández Morán dedicated himself to developing the project of a center for training and neurological and brain research.In 1958 Fernández Morán was asked to accept the post of Minister of Education, which he held for ten days, until January 23, the date of the fall of the dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez.

That brief relationship with power would haunt him relentlessly and serve as an excuse to discredit any of his achievements as a scientist; it would eventually force him, in mid-1958, to take the route of voluntary exile.He handed over the direction of the recently founded IVNIC (Venezuelan Institute of Neurology and Brain Research) to Dr.Marcel Roche and the following year the institute was expanded to other areas of research, renamed the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research (IVIC).

Tireless, Fernández Morán settled in the United States in 1958 and organized the Mixter Laboratories for Electron Microscopy at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston; He also collaborated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).In 1962 he accepted the post of Professor of Biophysics at the University of Chicago; In 1967 he obtained the Pritzker Professorial Chair of the Division of Biological Sciences of the School of Medicine of said university and was recognized with the John Scott Prize for the diamond blade, an award previously awarded, among others, to Jonas Salk (polio vaccine) , Marie Curie (radioactivity and its properties), Thomas Edison (incandescent lamp) and Alexander Fleming (for the discovery of penicillin).In parallel to his work as a teacher, Fernández Morán continued his research and continued working on the development of electronic cryomicroscopy.In 1985 he returned to Stockholm; there he would remain until his death, on March 17, 1999.

The political position of the citizens of many countries, throughout history and to this day, has been more erroneously perceived in their relationship with leaders than in their commitment to true national institutions.Just as the bachelor Rafael Rangel was identified with General Juan Vicente Gómez, Humberto Fernández Morán was one of the victims of this immature thought, of the black legend in which they pay justly for sinners, by identifying him with the Pérez Jiménez regime, who supported him in the creation of the IVNIC (current IVIC), an emblematic and exemplary institution that has managed to survive dictators, parties and crises.

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