Doctors and Scientists

By Dolors Farran
 
Catalonia has been the birthplace of some to the most prestigious doctors and scientists who are currently making valuable contributions to modern science and medicine.

Here we are going to write about some famous Catalans around the world. The list is by no mean an exhaustive one and the criteria applied has been to include those Catalans whose talent and expertise have taken them to hold a post in some of the most innovative European and American institutions. These Catalans have often been on the news because they have deserved well-known awards for their outstanding research and breakthroughs in their own fields of study.

Doctors:

• Josep Baselga,  who serves as Physician-in-Chief at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. 

• Joan Massaguer, 

 He is the director of the Sloan-Kettering Institute and Chair of the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. An internationally recognized leader in the study of both cancer metastasis and growth factors that regulate cell behavior

• Manel Esteller,  researcher at the School of Biological and Medical Sciences at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, during which time his research interests focused on the molecular genetics. He is also the editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal Epigenetics

• Valentí Fuster,  a Catalan cardiologist who serves as Director of Mount Sinai The Mount Sinai Hospital, and Director of the Zena and Michael A. Wiener Cardiovascular Institute.

Scientists: 

• Joan Oró

This international biochemist was born in our home town, Lleida. People from Lleida feel very proud of him because his research has been of  great importance in understanding the origin of life. He participated in several NASA missions, including Apollo mission to the Moon and the Viking lander.
Learn more bout him on this blog

• Guillem Anglada, a physicist and astronomer working for the London Queen Mary University and who at the end of 2016 was chosen as one of the best 10 scientist in the world by the magazine Nature. He's well known for having discovered an exoplanet, Proxima b,  that might be suitable for human life in the near future

• Lluís Torner, one of members of the high-level expert group for the Quantum Technology Flagship set-up by the European Commission. His main field of interest is the potential impact of quantum technologies on industry, the economy and daily life.