On the occasion of Nobel Prize Day, the Rei Jaume I Prize Foundation held its second edition, this time dedicated to Spanish Nobel Prize winner Severo Ochoa.

The day began with a talk on “Severo Ochoa’s idea of creating a foundation, the realization of the project” by Regina Revilla, president of the Carmen and Severo Ochoa Foundation. For Revilla, “it is necessary to vindicate the figure of Severo Ochoa as a driving force behind the fact that so many Nobel Prize winners have been brought together at the Valencian Foundation of the Rei Jaume I Prizes since its inception.” She recalled how the Spanish Nobel laureated donated his entire library to the Foundation, a legacy that is still preserved today in its facilities.

“Research needs more minds than resources,” Ochoa said, and “science is the effort to understand nature, and its reward is the joy of discovery,” the Spanish Nobel laureate said, as recalled by some of his students gathered by the Valencian Foundation to commemorate his day.

Revilla acknowledged that “his truest legacy lies in his disciples, that invisible school, that network of knowledge based on freedom, trust, and responsibility, principles on which he based his work.” Revilla recalled his struggle to create a foundation that would be run by the Spanish scientists he had trained, and that is how, after his death, the Carmen and Severo Ochoa Foundation was born in 1994.

Mª Dolores Pinazo, professor of ophthalmology at the University of Valencia and currently the most cited researcher in Spain, moderated the round table discussion with Luis Blanco, research professor at the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Center, who spoke about Severo Ochoa and the code of life: a legacy for the future. Blanco referred to DNA and RNA and claimed that Ochoa was “the key to finding the code of life.”

Mª José Alonso, who won the Rei Jaume I Prize in 2011 for New Technologies and is a professor of pharmaceutical technology at the University of Santiago de Compostela, acknowledged that “I was not aware of the extent of Severo Ochoa’s legacy until I learned more about his life and his way of nurturing talent, which is formed in the chain of great advances.”

Xavier Salvatella also participated, and at the end of this round table, a commemorative book on the Spanish Nobel Laureated was presented, with speeches from Federico Pallardó and Vicente Rubio.

If you want to see the entire event: