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Abstract

As a homage, full of admiration, gratitude and affection, to his memory, this article is a scientific and human biography of professor Ochoa (1905- 1993), one of the most outstanding authorities of c1assic biochemistry -which shone with magnificence in the first half of this century- and one of the founders of modem molecular biology, bom with vigour and grandeur in the late 1950. After his initial education in Málaga, Severo Ochoa entered Madrid University in 1922 to study medicine under the influence exerted upon him by the famous neuroanatomist Ramón y Cajal and was selected to work under the direction of the professor of physiology Negrin. From 1929 to 1941, Ocho a worked in Germany with Meyerhof, in England with Dale and Peters, and in USA with the Coris. After Ochoa's long peregrination, his destination was New York, where he became research associate and professor of biochemistry and carried out most of his celebrated discoveries during the period 1942-1974 , when he moved to Nutley until the date of his definitive retum to Madrid in 1985. Ochoa is the father of oxidative phosphorylation and the discoverer of polynucleotide phosphorylase, the enzyme which catalyzes the formation of ribonuc1eic acid from nucleoside diphosphates. He also contributed decisively to the elucidation of some fundamental reactions in photosynthesis and intermediary metabolism, the breaking of the genetic code and the biosynthesis of proteins. Ochoa was awarded the 1959 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine, sharing it with his former student Arthur Komberg.