Carlos Manuel Ramírez Corría

He was born in San Luis, former province of Oriente, and is considered the most prominent Cuban neurosurgeon and father of the specialty in Cuba. He graduated as a doctor of medicine in 1927 and was an activist in the revolutionary ranks against the Machado dictatorship. Persecuted by the tyranny, he left clandestinely for Haiti and later moved to Paris to pursue postgraduate studies. Admitted to Hospital "La Pitié" in Paris as a disciple of Dr. Clovis Vincent, who was later the founder of neurosurgery in France, he decided on his vocation for the specialty and later deepened his knowledge in Spain, with the histologist Don Pío del Río Ortega and the physiologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal; and later in Buenos Aires, with Dr. Bernardo Houssay, these last two being Nobel Prize winners in Medicine. He returned to France and received an offer from Professor Vincent, but he rejected it and returned to Cuba where he decided to stay after being impressed by the high incidence of mortality in polytrauma children. In 1934 he obtained a position through competitive examination at Hospital Universitario "General Calixto García". He was appointed Minister of Health and Social Assistance on June 24, 1949; that same year he succeeded in founding the first Neurosurgery Service in Cuba at Hospital Universitario "General Calixto García", which he directed until his death. In 1959, despite numerous job offers received from abroad, he preferred to remain in his country during a period characterized by the massive exodus of doctors and other professionals. In 1964, Decree No. 2384 of the Revolutionary Government appointed him as Numerary Academician of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba. A man of vast literary culture, knowledgeable of the classics, he united his scientific knowledge with a humanistic training developed through the passionate practice of his profession. On March 27, 1977, at 74 years of age, the illustrious Father of Cuban Neurosurgery died from severe cerebral contusion as a consequence of a tragic automobile accident.