The UAB to award honorary doctorates to Margarita Salas and Josep Maria Flotats

23/03/2017

The UAB Governing Council has approved the nomination of an honorary doctorate in biochemistry for Margarita Salas and in fine arts for Josep Maria Flotats. They were nominated by the Faculties of Sciences and Biosciences, and by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, respectively. The awards ceremony will take place soon.


Dr Salas was a disciple of Nobel Laureate Severo Ochoa, who was the person who would awaken her interest in biochemistry. After earning her PhD in Science from the Complutense University of Madrid, in which she conducted her thesis on the study of the phosphoglucose isomerase enzyme found in yeast and intervening in the metabolism of sugars, she went on to a post-doctoral stay at the Ochoa laboratories in the US.


Upon returning to Spain, she began a project at the CSIC Biological Research Centre on bacteriophages as a study model of molecular biology of morphogenesis, replication and transcription, a subject which marked her whole scientific career. She has dedicated 56 years to understanding the molecular biology of ɸ29. Among other achievements in this field, one of her most outstanding was the discovery and characterisation of the ɸ29 DNA polymerase, given that the amplification technologies based on this polymerase are a powerful tool in genomic studies. Her relation with the UAB, and specifically with its Microbiology Unit, has grown over the past few years thanks to the founding of FAGOMA, a network for Spanish researchers working on bacteriophages.


Salas is the author of 196 publications in first-quartile journals (Journal Citation Reports) with 11,354 citations and an h-index of 55. She is also the inventor of the most profitable patent Spain has ever had and has also directed 33 PhD theses. Dr Salas is member of the Royal Spanish Academy, the Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences, of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. Among many other distinctions, she has received the Santiago Ramón y Cajal National Research Prize and the Civil Order of Alfons X, the Wise.

A Leader in the Scenic Arts

Flotats, renowned theatre director both to the north and south of the Pyrennees, will receive the first honorary doctorate awarded to him in Spain. His career began in France, where he studied at the Ecole Supérieure d'Art Dramatique de Strasbourg. He later went on to form part of different theatre companies in Strasbourg and Paris. In 1981, he began working for the Comédie-Française theatre and one year later he was named membre sociétaire. After finishing his period with the Comédie-Française, he began working in Madrid and Barcelona, where he was the director of the Spanish Royal Theatre and founder and first director of the Catalan National Theatre. He also created his own company, Companyia Flotats, and a production company called Taller 75, SL.

He has always stood out for his acting skills as well as for the directing, translating, theatrical creation and adaptation of works originally conceived for other means. Some of his most outstanding works are the representation of Molière's Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in 1983, the translation into Spanish of the French play Arte by Yasmina Reza, and the creation of the theatre show Ara que els ametllers ja són batuts, based on a text by writer Josep Pla. Throughout his career he has worked on both texts from the most renowned French authors (Corneille, Racine, Molière) and also universal writers (Sòfocles, Shakespeare, Arthur Miller, etc.).

Flotats, a great disseminator of the French culture in Catalonia and Spain,  and vice versa, has received many of the most outstanding cultural awards and distinctions. He has been named Officier of the Legion of Honour by the persident of the Republic of France and of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry for the Culture, and has received the Saint George's Cross by the Government of Catalonia and the Spanish Gold Medal of Merit of the Fine Arts.