Gertrudis de la Fuente

The Spanish community of biochemistry and molecular biology has had different women and men who have participated in the take-off of biology and biomedicine area in Spain, in universities and in CSIC. Gertrudis de la Fuente is among the pioneers who participated both in that take-off as well as the creation of Sociedad España de Bioquímica, who carried out researchers that disseminated in international networks before JStor and impact indexes.

Gertrudis de la Fuente has enjoyed a very long life, where she has achieved her scientific and professional ambitions to research and studying. Born in Madrid in 1921, in a modest family who was the medium where her ambitions for knowledge and work were built. She grew up in the railway village of Arroyo-Malpartida (Cáceres), where her father worked and where she wanted to become machine operator. She was a good student and for a while, she studied in children’s classes when schools were segregated by sex. Her Secondary Education was interrupted by the Spanish Civil war and finished it in 1942. She wanted to study mathematics or physics and finally decided to go for chemistry – she explained to me that she did so for the same reason men chose that career: because it was the one that offered more job opportunities. She told that she came in with excitement in Faculty of Sciences of University of Madrid where she studied Chemistry in 1948. She began her doctoral thesis researchers under the direction of Ángel Santos Ruiz in Pharmacy Faculty, also in Madrid. Once Alberto Sols came back from the United States, from a long stay in Carl and Gerty Cori laboratory in Saint Louis (Missouri), she joined the laboratory that provided Sols with university, a basement with scarce material where she had a modest space for biochemical experimentation. They worked with animal and yeast enzymes in a time of lack of funds for research. In 1956, Gertrudis de la Fuente obtained a position as a CSIC collaborator, stable position that allowed her to develop her entire research career. One of her first research works was about yeast hexokinase, cheap biological material and easy access with which they use in that group that Sols conducted a great research group that was published in foreign international dissemination magazines. Gertrudis de la Fuente participated in enzymically biochemical developments and kept in touch with her peers of Spain and foreign specialists in that biomedicine area: the mechanism of enzymatic action. One of those works, which aim is to check Daniel Koshland proposal about induced adjustment, allowed her to collaborate with Sols and younger female researchers who joined the biochemical laboratory. She moved with Sols group in 1956 to the newly built Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas where she participated in the creation of a research and teaching community that was organized with activities and ambitions that shared with foreign centers of that time.

Her great research activity was always accompanied by management responsibilities, of the lab work organization and a complete support of research ambitions and academic interests of Alberto Sols, whose protagonist in recent history of Spanish biochemistry sometimes the achievements and tasks of Gertrudis de la Fuentes remained occult. She participated with him and other CIB women and men and other Spanish research centres in the creation of Sociedad Española de Bioquímica. When Alberto Sols group moved to the Medicine Faculty of the new Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Gertrudis de la Fuente focused on the teaching of medical biochemistry and enzymic research directly related to the clinic, with some childhood and adult age pathologies. When in 1970 the first CSIC research professor category was created, comparable to that of the university chair, she was among the minority of women of scientific staff who were promoted to that new academic level. Hence the scientific recognition comes that led her being appointed responsible, in 1981, of the research coordination about what was called “Toxic syndrome” about the toxicity of colza oil.

She was an extraordinary woman in her knowledge and generosity. While she was studying and researching, most of the time, in touch with students and clinic, she lived with her mother and after relied on the company of whom she had been her collaborator, Trinidad López. During these last years, she was filmed and interviewed for many media and there is a short film about her life directed by Ángel Almazán. 

Gertrudis de la Fuente is one of the most influential representants of Spanish scientists who developed their career during the Franco regime and democracy, a long scientific live, with an active and calm political attitude, and up to date about the social problems, inequalities and women, about what was clearly manifested. Under her modest appearance there was a very productive scientific and a committed woman. She passed away in Madrid, January 22^nd, 2017.   

María Jesús Santesmases

Instituto de Filosofía, CSIC