Alvaro Reynoso Valdés

Physiological chemist, agronomist, and industrial technologist. He is considered the Father of Cuban Scientific Agriculture.

He was born in Alquízar, a town of the same name, belonging to La Habana Province.

His father and great-uncle, Antonio Reynoso Trujillo and Álvaro José Reynoso, coffee plantation owners with the ranks of lieutenant and captain pedáneo, respectively, in a district of Alquízar, showed great interest in empirical agronomic and botanical experimentation.

He earned his doctorate in Sciences from the University of Paris (1856), following chemical studies begun in 1848 with Edouard Robin, and training obtained in the biochemistry laboratory of Theofile Jules Pelouze (former student of the German Justus von Liebig, founder of agrochemistry) and in the Acclimatization Garden of Paris, directed by Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.

In Cuba he had been a favorite student of the Spanish José Luis Casaseca Silván, in the Chemistry chair of the Colegio de San Cristóbal (1844-1845).

As a science and medicine student in France, he conducted fundamental chemical research, such as that dedicated to ether which served as the definitive topic for his doctoral thesis in sciences, and also in human physiological chemistry, which were published between 1849 and 1856 in prestigious scientific journals of that European nation.

His orientation toward physiological chemistry is evident in his study on diabetes mellitus, which was novel for the time; to that same field belonged his work on the action of Curare, a poison used by South American indigenous peoples.

Under the influence of the teachings in agricultural Chemistry and Botany of Pelouze and Saint-Hilaire, as well as the nationalist demands of José Antonio Saco and the Count of Pozos Dulces, favorable to scientific agriculture in Cuba, Reynoso's professional vocation inclined toward Chemistry applied to the study of plants and soil, which is why he interrupted his medical career in 1855.

As part of his comprehensive scientific training, he knew firsthand and disseminated in Cuba in 1858 the biological theories about the immutability or not of species, which confronted George Cuvier and Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in the thirties.

He also had the opportunity to know the institutionalization processes of agricultural teaching and research that were taking place in France and Germany and to study, up close, the existing plans in Spain, then colonial metropolis of Cuba.

From his stay in Madrid, came his interest in artificial fish breeding in fresh waters. However, he obtained his main scientific successes in Cuba, between 1859 and 1864, when he replaced Casaseca in the direction of the Institute of Chemical Research of La Habana.

Despite the scarce state resources available, the institutional context was more favorable to agricultural research work, due to the support received from some private benefactors, including the sacrifice of Reynoso's own personal fortune.

In that context, in 1862 he conceived a comprehensive system of agrotechnical measures to guarantee the intensive cultivation of sugar cane, based on investigations of the physical and chemical conditions of soils and the plant itself, on the selection of new varieties, on the use of fertilizers, and on irrigation. With this system he intended to reduce the areas of sugar cane cultivation in order to promote agricultural diversification and the gradual elimination of slavery.

Between 1859 and 1864, Reynoso's scientific activity was associated with the ideological precepts of the Count of Pozos Dulces and José Antonio Saco, corresponding to the reformist political current, which was reflected in some of his most important works, among them his valuable [[Essay on the Cultivation of Sugar Cane, with prefaces written by Pozos Dulces, and the proposal he made in 1861 for José Antonio Saco to be elected as a member of merit of the Royal Academy of Medical, Physical and Natural Sciences of La Habana.

His own reception in the bosom of said Academy, as well as in that of the Economic Society, responded to the combination of his ideological affiliation and his indisputable professional quality.

From 1883 until his death, Reynoso maintained a generally ambiguous position or political withdrawal, disappointed by the impossibility of fully realizing himself as a research professional, given the lack of financial support from state authorities and private enterprise.

During those years, he suffered professional competition from agricultural engineers trained in Spain or elsewhere in Europe, and legal provisions that gave the latter preference in the pursuit of scientific activity, examples of which were the failed experimental agronomic station project presented by him to the Government in 1883, and his disqualification to work in a state station due to not being an agricultural engineer.

He was a corresponding member of foreign Academies of Sciences, such as that of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences of Madrid (1857) and those of Bavaria and Gottinga (1865), in addition to having been an Honorary Member of the Imperial Bahian Institute of Agriculture of Brazil (1877).

In Cuba he was a Full Member of the Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country (1858), Founding Academic (1861) and of Merit (1864) of the Royal Academy of Medical, Physical and Natural Sciences of La Habana, Honorary Member of the Circle of Landowners (1879), and Superior Advisor of Agriculture of the Government (1883), which appointed him to be part of the Agricultural Commission created with a view to establishing a state school of agriculture (1883-1884).

In addition to its dissemination in various languages, the measures recommended by Reynoso were successfully applied in Java (then a Dutch colony, now part of the Republic of Indonesia) while in Cuba conditions were not yet created for their practical implementation. He was the first to efficiently apply in Cuba the Theories of Liebig, known as the Minimum and Restitution theories, aimed at establishing the necessary nutritional balance of plants through the use of fertilizers.

In 1864 he proposed a complete technological innovation in sugar industrial production that was within the reach of landowners with fewer resources. In this way, he hoped to satisfy the hopes of that Creole sector not to have to renounce the social splendor provided by that industry for so many years.

Based on his laboratory discovery, Reynoso received the support of a group of landowners to achieve in France, on an industrial scale, the obtaining of sugar in the cold by freezing sugar cane juice. As a result of the failure of his invention (its merits and defects are still unknown), and the definitive dissolution of the Institute in 1869, he remained 19 years in the French capital, where he devoted himself to various application studies such as meat preservation with compressed air, pharmaceutical preparations of elixir and liquors, and those related to the creation of an innovative machine to extract sugar cane juice.

Shortly after his return to Cuba in 1883, he improvised an experimental field in the backyard of his house in the Cerro neighborhood, due to the lack of government support to establish the agronomic station projected by him that year.

He spent the last years of his life conducting research in that experimental field on various crops such as: sugar cane, coffee, cacao, cotton, and tobacco, among others, whose results were disseminated in the scientific section he attended at the Diario de la Marina.

He rejected the appointment of professor of organic Chemistry at the Faculty of Sciences of the Central University of Madrid, to assume in 1858 the Special Chair of Chemistry Applied to Agriculture and Botany of the General Preparatory School of La Habana. His teaching work was not systematic due to his preferences for research.

He converted the Institute of Chemical Research into one of the first agronomic stations in the world, based on the model of institution existing in Germany since 1851. For this he had the Chemistry laboratory that he brought from France, and the experimental field that the Count of Fernandina provided him on one of his coffee plantations in Pinar del Río.

As part of research and advisory functions, he conducted scientific excursions to various agricultural and sugar-producing regions of the country between 1863-1864 and 1884-1885. His performance as a disseminator is evident in the scientific editing of the Diario de la Marina (1858-1864 and 1883-1888), as well as the Annals and Memoirs of the Junta de Fomento and the Economic Society of Friends of the Country (1859-1865).

Main decorations awarded
He obtained a monetary prize in 1854 in the Medical and Surgery competition of the Academy of Science of Paris with a study on the presence of blood in the urine of people subjected to the inhalation of anesthetic medications.

Active bibliography
Essay on the Cultivation of Sugar Cane. Imprenta del Tiempo, La Habana, 1862
Progressive Studies on Various Scientific, Agricultural and Industrial Matters.
Collection of writings on the cultivation of cane, tobacco, corn, rice and others. Vol. 1. Imprenta del Tiempo, La Habana, 1861
Notes on Several Cuban Crops. Imprenta y Estereotipia de M. Rivadeneyra, Madrid, 1867
Considerations Regarding Fertilizers, Addressed to Cuban Farmers. Imprenta y Estereotipia de M. Rivadeneyra, Madrid, 1867.
Passive bibliography

Corral y Alemán, Isaac. "Álvaro Reynoso". In: Cuban Figures of Scientific Research. Publicaciones del Ateneo de la Habana, La Habana, 1942
Díaz Barreiro, Francisco. "Álvaro Reynoso: father of Cuban scientific agriculture". In: Álvaro Reynoso: Selection of Texts (Selection and introduction by Francisco Díaz Barreiro). Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, La Habana, 1984
Misas Jiménez, Rolando E. and Rosa M. González López. "The Institute of Chemical Research of La Habana: organization, topics and priority areas (1848-1864). In: Yearbook of the Center for Studies of History and Organization of Science. No. 1. La Habana, 1988, pp. 147-169
Misas Jiménez, Rolando E. The Obstacles of Economic Dependence in the Development of Science in Cuba: Álvaro Reynoso. In: Our Common History. Culture and Society. Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, La Habana, 1995, pp. 69-86
Misas Jiménez, Rolando E. Agricultural Science in Cuba: Nationalism and Modernity (1898-1909). In: Cuban Society at the Dawn of the Republic. Editorial de Ciencias Sociales. La Habana, (in press)
Pruna, Pedro M.: Moments and Figures of Science in Cuba. Editorial Academia, La Habana, 1994, pp. 40-43.
His masterwork, Essay on the Cultivation of Sugar Cane, was translated into several languages and is considered the principal work written on this grass.