Dr Alberto C. Taquini was born on December 6, 1905,
in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was a member of the
distinguished group of Argentine scientists surrounding Dr Bernardo
Houssay, winner of the Nobel Prize of Medicine and Physiology (1946),
at the Department of Physiology of the School of Medicine of the
University of Buenos Aires. Together with Luis Federico Leloir (Nobel
Prize of Chemistry, 1970), Eduardo
Braun-Menéndez,
and Juan Carlos Fasciolo, Dr Taquini described the enzymatic nature of
the renin-angiotensin system and its link with
hypertension.
On the basis of the experiments of Goldblatt et al1
published in 1934, Houssay and Fasciolo demonstrated an increase in
blood pressure when grafting an ischemic kidney to the neck of
a nephrectomized dog.2 Following on these initial results,
Houssay and Taquini3 showed the presence of a pressor
substance in the blood obtained from the renal vein of an
ischemic kidney. Taquini obtained a fellowship at the end of
1938 to work in the Fatigue Laboratory at Harvard University with Dr B.
Dill and Dr Paul D. White. His place on the Buenos Aires team studying
renal ischemia was taken by Eduardo Braun-Menéndez,
© 1998 American Heart Association, Inc.
In Memoriam
Professor Alberto C. Taquini
1905–1998
With great sadness we learned of the death
on March 4, 1998, of Professor Alberto C. Taquini, one of the
discoverers of angiotensin, a pioneer of hypertension
research, and a leading figure in cardiovascular and
clinical research in Latin America for the past 60 years. Professor
Taquini was 93 years old when he died after a brief illness.