PARES | Spanish Archives

Identification

Type:

Person

Preferred form:

Moles Ormella, Enrique (1883-1953)Alternative forms (other languages) Other forms

Dates of existence/Biographical dates:

Barcelona (España) 1883 - Madrid (España) 1953

History:

He was a Spanish pharmacist, physicist and chemist. He was the son of Pedro Moles Alrich and María Ormella Figuerola and he had four siblings: Juan, Odón, Pedro and Concepción.

He graduated in Chemical Sciences from the University of Barcelona and he earned a doctorate in Chemical Sciences from the Central University of Madrid and the title of his thesis was: ¿Revisión físico-química del peso atómico del flúor. Contribución a la química del mismo elemento¿. Moreover, he earned a doctorate in Pharmacy and Physics. He broadened his studies at the University of Leipzig with a scholarship offered by JAE and he held the chair of Inorganic Chemistry in the Department of Science at the Central University of Madrid. At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, he had to rule the ¿Instituto Nacional de Física y Química¿ , because Blas Cabrera passed the border to reach France. At the end of the conflict, his brothers, Juan and Pedro, went to exile in Mexico and Enrique moved to France. He was prosecuted by the Special Court for the Repression of Freemasonry and Communism for the crime of communism in 1940 and, in 1941, he went back to Spain where he was detained, imprisoned and then released, although he could not teach at the university anymore. In 1944, he started to work for the ¿Instituto de Biología y Sueroterapia (IBYS)¿ as a technical adviser of the Section of Pharmaceutical Chemistry. He married Julia Bello Conde and their son, Enrique Moles Conde, was the pharmacist who published a biography dedicated to his father in 1975. In his honor and remembrance, the National Price of Chemistry is named Enrique Moles Ormella, who is considered one of the most important Spanish Chemists of the XX century.

National Institute of Physics and Chemistry Board for the Development of Scientific Studies and Research

Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939

Date of the event: 1936 - 1939