Bernardo Houssay
Argentinian physician
Who was Bernardo Houssay?
Bernardo Alberto Houssay (April 10, 1887 – September 21, 1971) was an Argentinian physiologist. Bernardo Alberto Houssay was born in Buenos Aires. A precocious youngster, he was admitted to the Pharmacy School at the University of Buenos Aires at 14 years of age and subsequently to the Faculty of Medicine of the same university at 17 years old and was there from 1904 to 1910. His parents Albert and Clara Houssay were immigrants from France. While a third-year medical student, Houssay took up a post as a research and teaching assistant in the Chair of Physiology. After graduating, he quickly developed and presented his M.D. thesis on the physiological activities of pituitary extracts, published in 1911. This was a theme he would pursue for the rest of his scientific career.
Historical significance
Houssay was a co-recipient of the 1947 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovering the role played by pituitary hormones in regulating the amount of glucose in animals, sharing the prize with Carl Ferdinand Cori and Gerty Cori. He is the first Latin American Nobel laureate in the sciences.