to Leipzig, to the best physiology institute of Germany and even in Europe. He stayed in Germany for almost a decade, studying first medicine, then chemistry and to some extent, economics. He proved to be a brilliant student with extraordinary capacity for scientific research. In 1912 (when he was only twenty years old) under the guidance of Theodor von Brücke he obtained a doctorate in medicine and was immediately incorporated into the Institute of Physiology in Leipzig as a research assistant and then as an assistant professor. On 21 July 1914 he married María Fidelman Brodsky, a piano student and daughter of a wealthy family of Russian exiles living in the Netherlands. The couple had five children, three of whom survived: Juan, Rómulo, and Miguel. Negrín spoke English, French, German, and Russian, in addition to his native Spanish. Back to Spain At the end of 1915, in the middle of the First World War, the increasing difficulties he encountered in Germany to continue working prompted Negrin to return to Spain. He already had a solid professional prestige guaranteed by his research on the adrenal glands and the central nervous system and by a remarkable series of articles published in the best scientific journals in Europe. He was a pupil of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, who won the Nobel Prize of Medicine. In 1919 he obtained his medical degree in Spain, and in 1922 he became a professor of physiology at the Physiology Department at the Complutense University of Madrid Medical School at the age of 29. His physiology laboratory in Madrid became an internationally renowned research centre and a truly exceptional school of scientific training. Among the many students he inspired was Severo Ochoa, winner of the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Negrin opened wide, fascinating vistas to my imagination, not only through his lectures and laboratory teaching, but through his advice, encouragement, and stimulation to read scientific monographs and textbooks in languages other than Spanish. According to Ochoa, Negrín was a demanding tutor and a high proportion of students failed his exams. He also set up a private laboratory that was very successful. In 1923, his youngest daughter died in childbirth, which Negrín himself attended. Two years later, his other daughter died at the age of ten as a result of a typhus epidemic. These misfortunes would lead to the estrangement of the marriage and the entry