1 00:00:01,840 --> 00:00:08,680 Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey Brainstuff, Lauren Vohllebaum. Here, 2 00:00:10,039 --> 00:00:12,959 Speaker 1: it's Hispanic Heritage Month here in the United States, which 3 00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:15,480 Speaker 1: is an excellent excuse to talk about some of the 4 00:00:15,520 --> 00:00:19,320 Speaker 1: most world changing scientists who came from these Spanish speaking 5 00:00:19,360 --> 00:00:22,600 Speaker 1: countries of the Americas. Though you don't have to twist 6 00:00:22,600 --> 00:00:27,200 Speaker 1: our arms to talk about awesome scientists around here. First up, 7 00:00:27,400 --> 00:00:32,599 Speaker 1: let's talk about Carlos Juan Finlay. Okay, before Google doodles, 8 00:00:32,640 --> 00:00:37,000 Speaker 1: we honored important figures with postage stamps. Finlay, the physician 9 00:00:37,080 --> 00:00:40,360 Speaker 1: who first linked yellow fever to Mosquitos in eighteen eighty one, 10 00:00:40,680 --> 00:00:45,000 Speaker 1: has received both tributes. Given the innumerable lives he saved 11 00:00:45,040 --> 00:00:48,400 Speaker 1: in the decades of scorn he endured for this radical link, 12 00:00:48,640 --> 00:00:52,839 Speaker 1: we'd say he more than deserves them. Born in Cuba 13 00:00:52,880 --> 00:00:56,200 Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty three, Finlay studied abroad before returning to 14 00:00:56,200 --> 00:00:59,520 Speaker 1: Havana as a general practitioner and optomologist with a penchant 15 00:00:59,520 --> 00:01:03,680 Speaker 1: for scientifce research. At the time, yellow fever was ravaging 16 00:01:03,760 --> 00:01:08,080 Speaker 1: the Tropics. This confounding infection caused a short flu like 17 00:01:08,120 --> 00:01:11,200 Speaker 1: illness in most people who caught it, but in some 18 00:01:11,920 --> 00:01:14,600 Speaker 1: just when their symptoms seemed to be improving, they'd be 19 00:01:14,760 --> 00:01:18,760 Speaker 1: slammed with jaundiced yellow skin from liver damage. An internal 20 00:01:18,760 --> 00:01:22,360 Speaker 1: bleeding would issue from the mouth, nose, and eyes. It 21 00:01:22,560 --> 00:01:27,200 Speaker 1: terrorized populations and disrupted all walks of life, including in Havana. 22 00:01:28,800 --> 00:01:32,800 Speaker 1: Finlay noticed that yellow fever epidemics roughly coincided with Havana's 23 00:01:32,880 --> 00:01:37,039 Speaker 1: mosquito season, but his mosquito transmission hypothesis was met with 24 00:01:37,160 --> 00:01:41,600 Speaker 1: disdain for decades until he convinced American military surgeon Walter 25 00:01:41,760 --> 00:01:44,880 Speaker 1: Reed to look into it. Yes that Walter Reed, who 26 00:01:44,880 --> 00:01:48,840 Speaker 1: the hospital was named for. Reed and his colleagues, who 27 00:01:48,840 --> 00:01:51,120 Speaker 1: had been dispatched to Cuba to fight the disease that 28 00:01:51,160 --> 00:01:53,880 Speaker 1: had killed so many soldiers during the Spanish American War, 29 00:01:54,400 --> 00:01:58,160 Speaker 1: helped Finlay refine his experiments and verify that a mosquito 30 00:01:58,400 --> 00:02:01,920 Speaker 1: was indeed the culprit. Yellow fever was wiped out of 31 00:02:01,960 --> 00:02:06,040 Speaker 1: Cuba and Panama by controlling mosquito populations, enabling engineers to 32 00:02:06,080 --> 00:02:11,480 Speaker 1: finally complete the Panama Canal. This work led eventually to 33 00:02:11,520 --> 00:02:14,680 Speaker 1: the discovery of the pathogenic virus that mosquitoes transmit to 34 00:02:14,720 --> 00:02:18,760 Speaker 1: cause yellow fever, and the development of a vaccine. Today, 35 00:02:18,880 --> 00:02:22,600 Speaker 1: yellow fever is limited mostly to areas blocking access to vaccines. 36 00:02:24,760 --> 00:02:28,240 Speaker 1: Our next researcher helped change our understanding of how the 37 00:02:28,240 --> 00:02:32,400 Speaker 1: immune system works in the first place. Baru Bnasiroth was 38 00:02:32,400 --> 00:02:35,920 Speaker 1: born in Caracas, Venezuela in nineteen twenty, lived in Paris 39 00:02:35,919 --> 00:02:37,880 Speaker 1: as a youth, and spent most of his life and 40 00:02:37,960 --> 00:02:41,840 Speaker 1: career in America. He became a naturalized citizen in nineteen 41 00:02:41,880 --> 00:02:44,680 Speaker 1: forty three after serving in the US Army wartime medical 42 00:02:44,720 --> 00:02:48,800 Speaker 1: training program that drafted him out of medical school. He 43 00:02:48,840 --> 00:02:51,520 Speaker 1: went on to become an immunologist who studied how our 44 00:02:51,560 --> 00:02:54,840 Speaker 1: immune system knows not to attack our own cells under 45 00:02:54,880 --> 00:02:59,400 Speaker 1: normal circumstances, and why it sometimes attacks transplanted organs and 46 00:02:59,560 --> 00:03:02,519 Speaker 1: even our own cells in the case of autoimmune diseases 47 00:03:02,639 --> 00:03:08,040 Speaker 1: like rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. Okay, the surfaces of 48 00:03:08,080 --> 00:03:11,680 Speaker 1: our cells team with a unique array of antigens that 49 00:03:11,800 --> 00:03:15,480 Speaker 1: identify those cells as ours and usually prevent our immune 50 00:03:15,480 --> 00:03:20,000 Speaker 1: system from attacking those cells. Binaserroff determined the genetic basis 51 00:03:20,040 --> 00:03:22,720 Speaker 1: of this, which won him the nineteen eighty Nobel Prize 52 00:03:22,720 --> 00:03:26,240 Speaker 1: in Physiology or Medicine and advanced by Leaps and bounds 53 00:03:26,240 --> 00:03:30,200 Speaker 1: are understanding of autoimmune diseases. He shared the Nobel with 54 00:03:30,240 --> 00:03:33,080 Speaker 1: George D. Snell, who uncovered the initial evidence for this 55 00:03:33,200 --> 00:03:36,400 Speaker 1: in mice back in the nineteen forties, and Jean Darcett, 56 00:03:36,520 --> 00:03:42,760 Speaker 1: who was the first researcher to identify a human compatibility antigen. Next, 57 00:03:42,880 --> 00:03:46,040 Speaker 1: let's talk about a researcher who looked into other cellular processes, 58 00:03:46,400 --> 00:03:50,520 Speaker 1: those that fuel our bodies. As much as fad diets 59 00:03:50,600 --> 00:03:53,480 Speaker 1: might tell us to cut out carbs, these energy packed 60 00:03:53,520 --> 00:03:57,080 Speaker 1: molecules are essential to most life thanks to two opposing 61 00:03:57,160 --> 00:04:00,880 Speaker 1: chemical processes, a combustion which allows us to break down 62 00:04:00,920 --> 00:04:03,920 Speaker 1: carbohydrates and release energy needed to make our bodies work, 63 00:04:04,400 --> 00:04:07,960 Speaker 1: and synthesis, which enables us to use various sugars to 64 00:04:08,040 --> 00:04:13,119 Speaker 1: build other substances that we need to live. Before Argentine 65 00:04:13,120 --> 00:04:17,600 Speaker 1: physician and biochemist Luis Federico Leloirre did his groundbreaking research 66 00:04:17,680 --> 00:04:21,359 Speaker 1: into the transformation of one sugar into another, combustion was 67 00:04:21,400 --> 00:04:27,160 Speaker 1: well understood, but synthesis remained a mysterious phenomenon. By isolating 68 00:04:27,200 --> 00:04:31,480 Speaker 1: a new class of substances called sugar nucleotides, leloire found 69 00:04:31,520 --> 00:04:36,600 Speaker 1: the key to deciphering this voluminous backlog of unsolved metabolic reactions. 70 00:04:37,440 --> 00:04:40,560 Speaker 1: A new field of biochemistry opened up virtually over night, 71 00:04:40,880 --> 00:04:44,320 Speaker 1: and Laloire received the nineteen seventy Nobel Prize in Chemistry 72 00:04:44,360 --> 00:04:47,960 Speaker 1: for his work. He was born in Paris to Argentine 73 00:04:48,040 --> 00:04:50,480 Speaker 1: parents in nineteen oh six, and the family moved to 74 00:04:50,520 --> 00:04:52,960 Speaker 1: Buenos Aires when he was two years old, where he'd 75 00:04:53,000 --> 00:04:55,720 Speaker 1: live in work for most of the rest of his life. 76 00:04:55,800 --> 00:04:59,000 Speaker 1: After earning his medical degree from the University of Buenos Aires, 77 00:04:59,080 --> 00:05:02,279 Speaker 1: he worked at the Institut due to Physiology, then established 78 00:05:02,320 --> 00:05:05,560 Speaker 1: the Institute for Biochemical Research, which is where he began 79 00:05:05,680 --> 00:05:08,840 Speaker 1: the research into milkshuters called lactose that would lead to 80 00:05:08,880 --> 00:05:13,120 Speaker 1: his great breakthrough. But let's move out of the human 81 00:05:13,160 --> 00:05:17,680 Speaker 1: body and into the wider world. A quick glance at 82 00:05:17,760 --> 00:05:21,599 Speaker 1: Luis Alvarez's array of research and engineering projects reveals why 83 00:05:21,640 --> 00:05:26,400 Speaker 1: colleagues described him as the prize wild idea man. Just 84 00:05:26,440 --> 00:05:30,120 Speaker 1: a sample. He built US President Eisenhower an indoor golf 85 00:05:30,160 --> 00:05:34,119 Speaker 1: training machine, analyzed the Zeppruder film, which is the color 86 00:05:34,160 --> 00:05:37,560 Speaker 1: film that happened to capture John F. Kennedy's asassination, and 87 00:05:37,839 --> 00:05:41,560 Speaker 1: tried to locate an Egyptian Pyramids treasure chamber using cosmic rays, 88 00:05:43,600 --> 00:05:46,200 Speaker 1: but the large part of his career was spent studying 89 00:05:46,240 --> 00:05:50,240 Speaker 1: subotomic particles in their behavior in situations like radioactive decay 90 00:05:50,279 --> 00:05:54,440 Speaker 1: and interaction with magnetic fields. Born in nineteen eleven in 91 00:05:54,480 --> 00:05:58,000 Speaker 1: San Francisco to Spanish American parents, he had already done 92 00:05:58,080 --> 00:06:01,039 Speaker 1: pioneering work in subatomic particle by the beginning of World 93 00:06:01,120 --> 00:06:05,520 Speaker 1: War II. During the war, he invented several radar applications 94 00:06:05,560 --> 00:06:09,320 Speaker 1: and worked on the Manhattan Project. After that, he worked 95 00:06:09,360 --> 00:06:12,479 Speaker 1: on the first proton linear accelerator and was awarded the 96 00:06:12,600 --> 00:06:15,240 Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight Nobel Prize in Physics for his work 97 00:06:15,279 --> 00:06:20,960 Speaker 1: with elementary particles. Physicists had already constructed cloud chambers and 98 00:06:21,040 --> 00:06:25,640 Speaker 1: bubble chambers capable of spotting speedy charged particles via condensing 99 00:06:25,720 --> 00:06:30,840 Speaker 1: vapor or boiling liquid, but tiny resonance particles, which exist 100 00:06:30,960 --> 00:06:33,760 Speaker 1: for a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, were 101 00:06:33,800 --> 00:06:37,640 Speaker 1: only detectable by the traces they left behind products of 102 00:06:37,640 --> 00:06:42,599 Speaker 1: disintegration and collision reactions with other particles. Alvarez developed his 103 00:06:42,640 --> 00:06:46,599 Speaker 1: own bubble chamber camera stabilizers and a computerized system for 104 00:06:46,680 --> 00:06:51,400 Speaker 1: analyzing bubble photographs. Together with the linear accelerators that he 105 00:06:51,400 --> 00:06:56,040 Speaker 1: helped invent. These revolutionized the discovery of elemental particles, which 106 00:06:56,080 --> 00:06:58,200 Speaker 1: he and his team went on to discover by the 107 00:06:58,440 --> 00:07:04,919 Speaker 1: tiny truckload. Next we have an environmental scientist, Mario J. Molina, 108 00:07:05,279 --> 00:07:09,320 Speaker 1: born in nineteen forty three in Mexico. A little bit 109 00:07:09,320 --> 00:07:11,760 Speaker 1: of background for this one. The end of the twentieth 110 00:07:11,800 --> 00:07:15,640 Speaker 1: century was marked by the recognition that humans could significantly 111 00:07:15,640 --> 00:07:19,840 Speaker 1: affect the environment, even the Earth itself. But as of 112 00:07:19,880 --> 00:07:24,520 Speaker 1: the early nineteen seventies, beyond localized ecological concerns over things 113 00:07:24,560 --> 00:07:28,840 Speaker 1: like factory pollution or the pesticide DDT and the vaguer 114 00:07:28,960 --> 00:07:33,200 Speaker 1: terror of nuclear winter, we hadn't much considered the potentially 115 00:07:33,280 --> 00:07:38,080 Speaker 1: global consequences of industry. This was especially true in the 116 00:07:38,080 --> 00:07:41,800 Speaker 1: case of chlorofloracarbons or CFCs, which are a group of 117 00:07:41,840 --> 00:07:44,600 Speaker 1: chemicals that are made up of chlorine, fluorine, and carbon 118 00:07:45,000 --> 00:07:47,720 Speaker 1: that were found to be useful because they have various 119 00:07:47,720 --> 00:07:51,800 Speaker 1: cool properties and are non toxic and non flammable, so 120 00:07:52,160 --> 00:07:56,880 Speaker 1: they were going into everything from aerosol sprays to refrigerators. 121 00:07:57,000 --> 00:08:01,680 Speaker 1: But in nineteen seventy four, scientists Sherwood Rowland and Mario J. 122 00:08:01,800 --> 00:08:05,680 Speaker 1: Molina argued that CFCs weren't as harmless as they seemed. 123 00:08:06,440 --> 00:08:09,640 Speaker 1: Instead of washing out of the sky through rainfall or oxidation, 124 00:08:10,120 --> 00:08:13,480 Speaker 1: they floated into the upper stratosphere, where ultraviolet waves from 125 00:08:13,480 --> 00:08:16,320 Speaker 1: the sun broke them apart and set off an ozone 126 00:08:16,320 --> 00:08:21,360 Speaker 1: destroying chemical reaction. In nineteen eighty five, the British Antarctica 127 00:08:21,400 --> 00:08:24,560 Speaker 1: Survey detected a hole in the ozone layer, and we've 128 00:08:24,600 --> 00:08:27,760 Speaker 1: been trying to prevent and correct the damage ever since, 129 00:08:27,960 --> 00:08:30,200 Speaker 1: as the ozone is what keeps some of the dangerous 130 00:08:30,280 --> 00:08:35,040 Speaker 1: radiation from the sun out. As a child in Mexico City, 131 00:08:35,240 --> 00:08:38,480 Speaker 1: Molina admired his aunt, a chemist, and emulated her by 132 00:08:38,480 --> 00:08:42,520 Speaker 1: converting a spare bathroom into a makeshift chemistry lab. He 133 00:08:42,559 --> 00:08:46,120 Speaker 1: studied in Mexico and abroad, and made his groundbreaking discovery 134 00:08:46,120 --> 00:08:49,360 Speaker 1: concerning CFCs during his post doctoral stint with Roland at 135 00:08:49,480 --> 00:08:52,959 Speaker 1: University of California, Irvine. The work earned them in the 136 00:08:53,080 --> 00:08:56,120 Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and honor they 137 00:08:56,160 --> 00:08:59,240 Speaker 1: shared with Paul J. Crutzen, a pioneer in studying the 138 00:08:59,240 --> 00:09:05,560 Speaker 1: effects of nitrie oxide on ozone destruction. Our final entry 139 00:09:05,600 --> 00:09:09,400 Speaker 1: today honors engineer Ellen Ochoa, the first Latina to become 140 00:09:09,440 --> 00:09:12,800 Speaker 1: an astronaut. She was born in nineteen fifty eight in 141 00:09:12,800 --> 00:09:16,199 Speaker 1: Los Angeles, California, and earned her master's degree and doctorate 142 00:09:16,200 --> 00:09:20,320 Speaker 1: in electrical engineering from Stanford University. As She went on 143 00:09:20,400 --> 00:09:24,080 Speaker 1: to research information processing at Sandia National Laboratories and the 144 00:09:24,200 --> 00:09:27,120 Speaker 1: NASA Ames Research Center, and she's listed as the co 145 00:09:27,160 --> 00:09:31,439 Speaker 1: inventor on free patents in optics, object recognition, and image processing. 146 00:09:32,440 --> 00:09:35,400 Speaker 1: Ochoa became an astronaut in nineteen ninety one and flew 147 00:09:35,520 --> 00:09:38,720 Speaker 1: four Space Shuttle missions over the next eleven years, spending 148 00:09:38,760 --> 00:09:42,600 Speaker 1: almost one thousand hours in orbit conducting research, including into 149 00:09:42,679 --> 00:09:46,440 Speaker 1: damage to the ozone layer. In twenty thirteen, she was 150 00:09:46,480 --> 00:09:49,640 Speaker 1: promoted to director of the Johnson Space Center, the first 151 00:09:49,679 --> 00:09:53,679 Speaker 1: Hispanic person and second woman to achieve that honor. As 152 00:09:53,679 --> 00:09:56,920 Speaker 1: she eventually retired from NASA to serve on several boards, 153 00:09:57,000 --> 00:10:00,920 Speaker 1: both corporate and nonprofit, aimed at using science to create 154 00:10:01,080 --> 00:10:08,480 Speaker 1: a better future. Today's episode is based on the article 155 00:10:08,640 --> 00:10:11,720 Speaker 1: ten Hispanic scientists you should know on HowStuffWorks dot Com, 156 00:10:11,760 --> 00:10:14,439 Speaker 1: written by Nicholas Garabus. The brain Stuff is production of 157 00:10:14,480 --> 00:10:17,439 Speaker 1: iHeartRadio in partnership with the Hastuffworks dot Com and is produced 158 00:10:17,480 --> 00:10:20,440 Speaker 1: by Tyler Klang four more podcasts from my heart Radio. 159 00:10:20,720 --> 00:10:23,920 Speaker 1: Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen 160 00:10:23,960 --> 00:10:25,000 Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.