Jordi Folch Pi

Who was Jordi Folch Pi?

Jordi Folch Pi was a Catalan biochemist at Harvard University who is recognized universally as one of the founders of the field of structural chemistry of complex lipids and as a leader in the development of Neurochemistry as a distinct discipline within the Neurosciences. He was born in Barcelona, Spain, on March 25, 1911, and died in Boston, Massachusetts on October 3, 1979, at 69 years of age.

The father was a lawyer and a Catalan poet, the mother a teacher. As his mother liked and spoke French, Jordi Folch went to high school at the Lycée Français of Barcelona, from which he graduated in 1927. He then undertook Medicine studies and received an M.D. degree from the University of Barcelona Medical school in 1932.

The clinical training at the university was first rate and included a period as an intern in the surgical clinic of Dr. Antoni Trias and as the sole physician in Almedret, a small Catalan village of 800 people. By contrast, the basic sciences consisted mainly of lectures with little opportunity for hands-on laboratory experience.