Recollections Hermann Niemeyer Fernández: A Pioneer of Chilean Science

receive the Juvenal Hernández medal of the University of Chile. Shortly afterward, he retired from academic life for health rea-sons, and less than a year later he died. Thus, many current members of Panamerican Association for Biochemistry and Mo-lecular Biology (PABMB) or even of the Chilean Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology had no opportunity to know him, and it is likely, therefore, that many may ask why his name was chosen for a lecture of the Spanish Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, a choice that has helped to strengthen the links between the Chilean and Spanish Soci-eties. Why he is so important? Hermann Niemeyer was one of the most fortunate encounters of my life; he introduced me to hexokinases and metabolic reg-ulation. I did the research work for my PhD thesis with him, while having a teaching position at the University of Chile. So I was able to know him well as a researcher, as a university professor, and as a friend. The son of a German father and of a mother of Spanish origin, he had what I would call hybrid vigor. In this moment, when in many countries research is suf-fering from the economic crisis, the figure of scientific giants like Hermann Niemeyer, with the ability and the generosity of acting as leaders and showing the way, acquires particular rele-vance and constitutes an example to follow. I would argue that although he did many important things at different levels, supported throughout his career by his wife Maruja, what makes him an outstanding person lies not in any one action or discovery, but in the totality of what he achieved, for which he was elected to the Chilean Academy of Sciences in 1972, earned the National Prize for Science in 1983, an