Death Leão died on December 14, 1993, in São Paulo, at the age of 79, due to respiratory failure. He was buried in Rio de Janeiro, in the family grave. Legacy According to Rodrigo Polito at Uol, Leão is the author of one of the most cited physiology articles in the world and dedicated his life to the development of science in his native country. Carlos Chagas Filho described him as "...one of the greatest scientists I knew, he was extremely simple and cultured, a great stimulator of research among young people and an exceptional professor of general and comparative physiology..." who left a great number of disciples in Brazil and abroad, besides having had a great influence on the projection of the Institute of Biophysics as an institution of excellence abroad. In 2002 it was demonstrated that depolarization occurs in human brains and in 2018, the article "Terminal spreading depolarization and electrical silence in death of human cerebral cortex", published in Annals of Neurology, for the first time revealed that the spreading depression described by Leão occurs in the human brain after the end of cardiac activity. In a possible coincidence, co-author Jed Hartings discovered that the series Star Trek: The Next Generation had laid out this process in general form in the episode Skin of Evil in much the same way as the 2018 research, which leads co-researcher Jens Dreier to believe that the scriptwriters may have borrowed from similar research (or even Leão's). Personal life Leão enjoyed sport fishing, classical composers, Brazilian popular music and being considered by his colleagues as having a "prodigious culture", his ornithology collection surpassed that of the National Museum, although he considered himself an amateur in the field. In doing so, he also developed as a naturalist and had in Charles Darwin his main reference. He also behaved as a humble person, despite his academic position and achievements. considers Aristides to be the father of bioacoustics in Brazil. Scientific papers See also Neuroscience Migraine Headache References Note Bibliography (Internet Archive) External links 1914 births 1993 deaths 20th-century Brazilian scientists Neurophysiologists 20th-century physicians Recipients of the Great Cross of the National Order of Scientific Merit (Brazil) University of São Paulo alumni Harvard Medical School alumni Members of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences Federal University of Rio de Janeiro faculty Deaths from respiratory failure Brazilian neuroscientists People from Rio de Janeiro (city) People associated