Biography
Altamirano was son of Manuel Altamirano y Tellez and Micaela Carbajal, and had at least two full siblings: Federico (1849) and Alberto ( 1852). He had also seven half brothers and sisters: Delfina Altamirano y Monterde (1835), Etelvina Altamirano y Monterde (1837), Jose Altamirano y Monterde (1839), Eduardo Altamirano y Monterde (1840), Rafael Altamirano y Monterde (1841), Maria Lucia Altamirano y Ruiz (1857) and Maria Margarita Altamirano y Ruiz (1860).
Fernando was baptized in the parish of Aculco, State of Mexico, on July 9, 1848, with the full name of Fernando Guilebaldo Isabel Juan Jose Maria de Jesus Altamirano.
During his childhood, around 1850, he moved with his family to San Juan del Río, and three years after, to the city of Santiago de Querétaro, where he studied at the San Francisco Javier College, called years later the Civil College. By the end of 1861, at age thirteen, he had already lost his father and mother, so his education was mostly influenced by his grandfather, Manuel Altamirano, a physician and botanist, who introduced him in the botanic studies.
In 1868, Altamirano moved to Mexico City, where he studied at the newly opened National Preparatory School. A year later, he joined the National School of Medicine, where he finished his studies in 1873. That same year, he entered the Academy of Medicine, which would be renamed a few years later as a National Academy of Medicine of Mexico. He also joined the Mexican Society of Natural History.
On November 9, 1873, Altamirano married Luisa Gonzalez, in the city of Santiago de Querétaro. Fernando and Luisa soon returned to Mexico City, where they had at least ten children, among them José Maria (1874) Josefa (1877), Rafael (1879), Fernando (1881), Luisa (1881), Maria (1883), José Ignacio (1885) Alberto (1886), Carlos (1886), and Jose Salvador (1890).
Initially, Altamirano worked as a temporary assistant in the departments of pharmacy, pharmacology and drug history at the National School of Medicine. In 1876, he published the catalog of indigenous natural products submitted by the Mexican Society of Natural History to the Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia, in 1876. In 1877, he was employed as pharmacist, or preparer of medications, and in 1878 obtained the degree of professor in the School of Medicine. He continued as a pharmacist and as a professor of pharmacology and physiology, but also as an interim professor of therapeutic, topographic anatomy and gynecology. In addition, he worked as a physician in the Hospital of San Andres and in private practice. In the same period, he published several articles in the Medical Gazette of Mexico and in the journal of the Mexican Society of History Natural.
In 1888, Altamirano was appointed as the first director of the National Medical Institute of Mexico. He held this position until his death. There, he installed the first laboratory of physiology in Mexico. During this period, he also made numerous trips of medical botany to different regions of the country, some in the company of internationally renowned botanists as Joseph Nelson Rose, Cyrus Pringle and George Russell Shaw. Additionally, Altamirano conducted numerous investigations, reported on the two journals of the institute: El Estudio and Anales del Instituto Médico Nacional. On the other hand, he was responsible for the Institute's involvement in the Exposition Universelle (1889), held in Paris, and in the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, held in St. Louis, Missouri, and participated in several international conferences, such as the Ninth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, held in Madrid from 10 to 17 April 1898. He established links with leading scientific institutions in Europe, U.S. and Latin America.
He was alderman in Mexico City in 1897, and in Villa Guadalupe on several occasions.
He died on October 7, 1908, at his home in Villa Guadalupe, Mexico City, due to an internal bleeding, resulted from a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm. He was buried in the Pantheon of Tepeyac in the same city.
Read more about this topic: Fernando Altamirano
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)