Generales

By: Ronal Castañeda Tabares - Journalist

The scientific method was connatural to Ángela Restrepo Moreno’s life. Since she was a child, she liked to ask why things happen the way they do and, over the years, she learned to answer with persistence and rigor. Her love for research, which she passed on to new generations, made her equally loved and admired. She always remembered that the spark that ignited her curiosity was her grandfather's microscope, a legacy she left to Universidad de Antioquia.

Ángela Restrepo Moreno during the celebration of the 200th anniversary of Universidad de Antioquia in 2003. Photo: Alma Mater newspaper archive.

She saw a microscope for the first time when he was seven years old. Julio Restrepo Arango, her grandfather, one of the first doctors to graduate from Universidad de Antioquia, had an apothecary's shop in the doorway of a large house in the Prado neighborhood, between Ecuador and Miranda streets, where he saw patients and sold the medicines he prepared himself. Angelita would walk down the corridor and see in the showcase a heavy, shiny, golden metal device with a magnifying glass and a mirror.

“What is that?”, the little girl asked her aunts.
“It's a microscope”, they answered again and again.
“And what is it for?” insisted the little girl.
“To see tiny things”, they told the observant Angelita, “to see the microbes that cause the diseases that your grandfather cures”. 

Those five words, "microscope", "tiny things", "diseases" and "cure", marked the life of "La Doctora", as some of Ángela’s colleagues called her, since she was a child. This is the story she told every time she was asked how she became a scientist. She never missed an opportunity to remember her grandfather. It also helped her students learn to see, as she did, the immensity in the smallest things. She passed away on February 3, 2022.

Microscopes followed her in high school. She recalled the book Microbe Hunters, by the American physician and bacteriologist Paul de Kruif, which describes the work of scientists who created the basis for knowing and understanding life through these optical instruments. Among them, she came across Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723), one of the first microscopists and precursor of microbiology, among other characters who studied the "invisible killers" that cause diseases.

Bet on Youth 

After an outstanding professional career with publications, studies and several national and international awards, she was called in 1993 to join the first Mission of the Wise, a group of intellectuals whose task was to build a roadmap for education, science, technology and innovation in the country for the 21st century. She was the only woman among 10 commissioners (see chronology).

In 1994, the intellectuals delivered the report Colombia: On the Edge of Opportunity, which called for "education from the cradle to the grave, nonconformist and reflective education that inspires a new way of thinking and encourages us to discover who we are in a society that loves itself more, that makes the most of our inexhaustible creativity and conceives an ethic and perhaps an aesthetic for our unbridled desire for self-improvement”.

Twenty-one years after the publication of the report, La Doctora mentioned that she still found reasons to continue fighting for education and science: "Today [the report] reveals the capacity that the country would have to move forward through research and academic preparation of those who will rule the country in a few years", she stressed in 2015.

Restrepo believed that Colombia had a great and untapped wealth of young people who could become the researchers of the future. As part of her contributions to the Mission of the Wise, Restrepo Moreno sought students with research aptitudes. To do so, she used the psycho-technical method of the 16 personality factors, 16 PF, a questionnaire traditionally used by companies for employee selection. She first used the test on recognized and experienced teachers and scientists, and on teachers who did not do research. Based on those results, she and her team surveyed about 900 students from seven universities and found that 10% had an aptitude for science. "What we were looking for was an individual who could cross mountains alone, without a guide or map", she confessed to the journalist Lisbeth Fog in a profile of her, published in 2019 in the Cultural and Bibliographic Bulletin of the Bank of the Republic.

A Rare Fungus

Despite her important work in education, Restrepo Moreno's most outstanding contribution was her research on fungi, especially the Paracoccidioides spp. family, which causes a disease called paracoccidioidomycosis, at times confused with tuberculosis because of similar symptoms.

"She studied this fungus for the last 60 years of her life. She joined forces with many students and collaborators to penetrate all the fields of that disease. She was always the researcher and author of the articles dealing with this disease in the best microbiology books and tons of high-impact international publications in English", commented Juan Guillermo McEwen Ochoa, founder (1991) of the Cellular and Molecular Biology Unit of the Corporation for Biological Research (CIB) and researcher of UdeA’s Faculty of Medicine, where he is now dedicated to the study of this fungus.

"She left new knowledge in all fields of science, especially in mycology. She improved the way diagnoses are made, methodologies, the way to understand the clinical presentation of diseases. In epidemiology, she helped in trials and protocols of new drugs", commented Professor Ángel González Marín, professor with a postdoctorate in medical mycology and a young researcher of La Doctora, now dedicated to studying paracoccidioidomycosis in the School of Microbiology the university.

Characteristic Humility

During the years of study dedicated to this disease, she and other professionals from Colombia, Brazil and the United States were able to identify that there were other agents involved in the fungus. In addition to the most widespread species, Paracoccidioides brasiliensis, they identified one found in tropical areas of Colombia, Caribbean plains, and valleys of the Cauca and Magdalena rivers, recorded in the scientific literature by her students —in honor of Restrepo Moreno— as Paracoccidioides restrepiensis.

At that time, she objected to her last name being the same as that of the species because of her aversion to being visible and her "characteristic humility", as Dr. McEwen Ochoa remembers her since he met her in 1980 while he was studying the first semesters of Medicine at UPB, very close to the laboratory that La Doctora had at the Pablo Tobón Uribe Hospital. In his words, she had a brilliant academic level, and her way of teaching was "very loving and strict", but she was not interested in visibility. No photos, no interviews, no awards, no tribute, no celebrations, no birthdays in October. Her medals were the students she had trained.

Angela Restrepo's grandfather's old microscope will be part of the Museum for Life. Photo: courtesy of the Faculty of Medicine.

The dean of UdeA’s Faculty of Medicine, Carlos Alberto Palacio, sees in her a role model: "In the formative processes of Universidad de Antioquia, there is "modeling". Ángela Restrepo is an example of a life with social, academic and scientific responsibility. She has to remain a symbol and a university representation of what an academic should be for many generations".

Before her death, she wrote in her will that, as a symbol of the story that led her to become a scientist, she would donate her grandfather's microscope to the faculty, to which she was linked for most of her career. The object will be part of the Museum for Life, a city project where the instruments that marked the history of health in Antioquia will be kept.

Chronology*

1931

She was born on October 28 in Medellín. 

1942

She studied at La Presentación School for women in Medellín. She graduated from high school in 1950.

1954

She graduated as a Clinical Laboratory Technologist from the School of Medical Technology of Colegio Mayor de Antioquia. 

1955

For three years, she worked as a medical technologist and internship monitor at the Department of Microbiology and Parasitology of Universidad de Antioquia’s Faculty of Medicine.

1958

She traveled to the United States to study for a Master of Science at Tulane University, New Orleans, USA. She returned in 1960 to pursue a doctorate, which she completed in 1965. 

1964

She was appointed full professor at the Faculty of Medicine of Universidad de Antioquia. She founded the Mycology Laboratory, a reference in the diagnosis, research and teaching of fungal diseases.

1970

With a group of colleagues, she was part of the foundation of the Corporation for Biological Research (CIB), by then supported by the faculty.

1977

She transferred to the Public Health Laboratory of the Antioquia Regional Health Service, where she was deputy director, and head of the Microbiology Section for two years. 

1978

Until 1996 she was head of the CIB’s Mycology Laboratory.

1993-1994

She was the only woman to participate in the first Mission of the Wise. This group was made up of personalities such as Gabriel García Márquez, Manuel Elkin Patarroyo and Rodolfo Llinás.

1995

She received the Alejandro Angel Escobar Award, one of the most important scientific accolades in Colombia, for her contribution to the study of paracoccidioidomycosis. 

1997

She was scientific director of the CIB, to which she was linked until her retirement in 2015.

2022

She passed away at the age of 90 on February 3 in Medellín. 

*Source: Academia Colombiana de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales www.accefyn.org.co