The Prince of Asturias Foundation
Pioneer and prime mover of Spanish biochemistry, Alberto Sols’ is the fundamental merit of the outstanding international position which Spain has reached in the field of biochemistry. Mentor of several generations of researchers, he has always been concerned about the conditions in which scientific work takes place and the ethical aspects of research activity.
Born in Sax, Alicante, in 1917, Alberto Sols Garcia studied at the University of Valencia, where he graduated in Medicine in 1944. Two years later, he earned his PhD at the University of Barcelona with a study on the transport and intestinal absorption of monosaccharides. In 1951, he decided to broaden his studies at the University of St. Louis (USA), where he worked for three years in the laboratory of Carl and Gerty Cori, 1947 Nobel Prize winners in Physiology or Medicine.
Sols returned to Spain in 1954 to start research work at the Institute of Physiology at the Complutense University of Madrid. Two years later, he moved to the newly inaugurated laboratories of the Spanish National Research Council [Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas – CSIC], where he carried out his studies, noteworthy among which is his research into the enzymology of carbohydrate metabolism and metabolic regulation.
He took part in founding the Spanish Biochemistry Society in 1963, which he chaired for five years. His line of scientific research shifted from the physiological problems involved in the intestinal absorption of sugars to work on enzymes and eventually to structural studies on such molecules. One of his most outstanding research studies is the one he carried out jointly with Robert Crane on the substrate specificity of hexokinase. This was the first study to describe a specific regulatory site of an enzyme (other than those binding substrates and their cofactors) which was also site-specific to the reaction product. Another important contribution of Professor Sols’ was the discovery of allosteric ATP inhibition of phosphofructokinase (an enzyme involved in the metabolism of carbohydrates). Sols reported these studies in various publications including Nuevo sistema de análisis calorimétrico and Regulación metabólica y acción enzimática. He also published over one hundred papers in professional journals. The memory of his work has been glossed in different tributes and publications by his contemporaries, pupils and colleagues. Defined by Severo Ochoa as the Don Quixote of Spanish biochemistry, he regarded molecular biology as a scientific revolution with profound ethical implications.
Holder of honorary doctorates from the Universities of Santander, Barcelona and Alicante, he was also Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry at the Autonomous University of Madrid’s Faculty of Medicine and honorary member of the American Society of Biological Chemists and the Biology and Biochemistry Societies of Chile. He likewise belonged to the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and to the scientific councils of the Health Research Fund, the Molecular Biology Centre of Madrid, the Cytological Research Institute of Valencia, the Ferrer Foundation, the Jimenez Diaz Memorial Conference Committee and the Board of Trustees of Spain’s University-Enterprise Foundation. The distinctions he received include the National Research Award in Biology and the Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso X the Wise.
