It is 25 years since the death of the Madrid biologist Faustino Cordón Bonet (1909-1999), worthy of a prominent role in the spanish science which he did not have, despite the importance of his formulations on the levels of integration of living things. Your participation in defense of the republic during the war and his left-wing ideology, from which he never abdicated, earned him ostracism, from which the recovered democracy in Spain did not know how or did not want to remove him.
This Monday it was presented at the Student Residencewithin the programming of the Science Week the book Faustino Cordón, the rebellious biologistedited by The Garage Editionsand written by journalist Elvira de Miguel and for Elena Cordonone of the biologist’s daughters. This biography vindicates not only the scientific Cordón but also the person full of sense of humor and brotherhood and the character who crossed the 20th century, soaked up the avant-garde and He demonstrated the bravery and determination of a hero.
The book aims to “draw attention to his work through the story of his life,” he tells Public Elena Cordonwho adds that his father’s work “continues to be the most rigorous current theorization of the levels of integration of living things and his theories are confirmed by the advances made by science since his death.”
The name of Faustino Cordón is not unknown in the Student Residence. He entered there at the age of 15 to study science, although after the first year he opted for art. He even spent some time in Paris, where he met his admired Picasso. From a family of pharmacists, his father wanted him to be a doctor, but that was “an impossible career for Faustino because the spectacle of the illness frightened him,” the book says.
His passage through Student Residence It marked him deeply and gave him a fundamental tool: to question everything and form your own critical opinion of things. Not in vain the center’s learning method was based on the postulates of the krausism, an intellectual and political movement that tried to replace the stale and traditional Spanish religiosity with an austere morality and the cultivation of science, ethics and pedagogy.
Faustino Cordóneminently evolutionary biologistanathematized by the leaders of the Franco sciencecarried out alone a fascinating investigation consisting of the strongest current theorization of the levels of integration of living things. But it was ignored by the scientific community. He developed his professional career in private industry, in pharmaceutical laboratories, dedicated to experimental research.
The science of 1950 did not value its findings
To illustrate the importance of his discoveries, Elvira de Miguel explains to Public a fundamental episode: “While Cordón was working on experiments on immunity, he discovered the ability of certain proteins to multiply their structures, which would lead him to consider them the fundamental units of life and he called them basibiones or globular proteins. In 1952 he wrote to a North American university with the intention of publishing the results of his research there, but he was completely ignored, as he was in Spain. Almost 50 years later, in 1997, the American biochemist and neurologist Stanley Prusiner He also discovered, studying ‘mad cow disease’, that certain proteins multiply. He called them prions. For this work Prusiner was awarded the “Nobel Prize in Medicine”.
“There are geniuses to whom history does justice long after they have disappeared because in their time their visionary theories were not framed between economic interests and/or the accepted ways of seeing the reality of their society,” the information states. preview about the book provided by the publisher The Garage Editions and there is no lack of reason given the genius of Cordón’s scientific formulations displayed on the web faustinocordon.orgwho wears his daughter Elena Cordóna didactic guide to the biologist’s work.
He was part of the resistant left-wing intellectuality during the Franco regime
Since 1934 Cordón was active in the Communist Partycommitted to the values of the Second Republic. Once the military coup leaders began their offensive, they did not hesitate to defend the democratic system; He became chief of arms of the V Regiment during the war. The conflict in Spain left him one-eyed and on the side of the defeated. He spent almost two years in prison in Alicante at the end of the war. Cordon was the first president of the Spain-USSR association in the Transition and a vehement pacifist during the last years of the Cold war.
He was a leftist intellectual during the dictatorship
This scientist was part of “the resistant left-wing intellectuality during the Franco regime and in the Transition he took a step forward again and was the first president of the Spain-USSR Association after the forty years of dictatorship in which they had broken
diplomatic relations between both countries,” says Elvira de Miguel,
which also emphasizes that “he did not abandon his pacifist trench either
when the PSOE organized the referendum for Spain to remain in NATO and expressed its opposition to this military organization in
How many forums allowed it. I suppose that, precisely because of this political commitment, he was systematically excluded from public institutions.”
For its part, Elena Cordongraduate in History and Geography and documentary filmmaker, points out in this regard: “Of course he was aware that his political background worked against him. All institutional doors were closed to him. His entire working life was carried out in private laboratories.”
“They ignored him but he didn’t have time to worry about that. He always said that he was worried about his own ignorance, not that of others,” says Faustino Cordón’s daughter.
The journalist and writer Elvira de Miguel remembers that Cordón “was also ignored by the academic world during the periods of the Transition and democracy.”
De Miguel also highlights that “today they continue in full force
some of the teachings of Faustino Cordón: like the one that stops
To advance in any discipline it is necessary to combat prejudices
own; that neither majorities nor intellectual fashions make truth; and that the advancement of truth is a difficult conquest, in which
We must resign ourselves to the fact that, at best, our
thought will one day be reorganized within the thought of another, which will necessarily be more consistent, more integrative and more true.
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