Biography
Luis Leloir – Biography
Luis F. Leloir was born in Paris of
Argentine parents on September 6, 1906 and has lived in Buenos Aires since he was two years old. He graduated as a Medical Doctor in the University of
Buenos Aires in 1932 and started his scientific career at the Institute of Physiology working with Professor Bernardo A. Houssay on the role of the adrenalin carbohydrate metabolism. In 1936 he
worked at the Biochemical Laboratory of Cambridge, England, which was directed by Sir
Frederick Gowland Hopkins. There he collaborated with Malcom Dixon, N.L. Edson and D.E. Green. On returning to Buenos Aires he worked with J.M. Muñoz on the oxidation of fatty acids in liver,
and also together with E. Braun Menéndez, J.C. Fasciolo and A.C. Taquini on the formation of angiotensin. In 1944 he was Research Assistant in Dr. Carl F. Cori's laboratory in St. Louis, United
States and thereafter worked with D.E. Green in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York. Since then he has been
Director of the Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas, Fundación Campomar. With his early collaborators, Ranwel Caputto, Carlos E. Cardini, Raúl Trucco and Alejandro C. Paladini work was
started on the metabolism of galactose which led to the isolation of glucose 1,6-diphosphate and uridine diphosphate glucose. The latter substance was then found to act as glucose donor in the
synthesis of trehalose (with Enrico Cabib, 1953 ) and sucrose (with Carlos E. Cardini and J.Chiriboga, 1955). Other sugar nucleotides such as uridine diphosphate acetylglucosamine and guanosine
diphosphate mannose were also isolated. Further work showed that uridine diphosphate glucose is involved in glycogen synthesis and adenosine diphosphate glucose in that of starch.
More recent investigations (with Nicolás Behrens) have dealt with the role of a polyprenol, dolichol, in glucose transfer in animal tissues.
Luis Leloir was married in 1943 to Amelia Zuberbuhler and has a daughter, Amelia. At present Leloir is Professor in the Faculty of Sciences, University of Buenos Aires. He is a member of the
following academies; National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
Academia Nacional de Medicina, American Philosophical Society, Pontificial Academy of Sciences, and Honorary Member of the Biochemical Society (England). He has received honorary degrees of the
following universities: Granada (Spain), Paris (France), Tucuman (Argentina) and La Plata (Argentina). Prof. Leloir has received the following awards: Argentine Scientific Society, Helen Hay
Whitney Foundation (United States), Severo Vaccaro Foundation (Argentina), Bunge and Born Foundation (Argentina), Gairdner Foundation (Canada), Louisa Gross Horowitz (United States), Benito Juarez
(Mexico); and at present he is President of the Pan-American Association of Biochemical Societies.
From Les Prix Nobel
1970.
Luis Leloir died in 1987.
Source: The Nobel Foundation