Maurício Rocha e Silva

Maurício Oscar da Rocha e Silva (19 September 1910, Rio de Janeiro – 19 December 1983, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil) was a Brazilian physician, biomedical scientist and pharmacologist. He discovered bradykinin, an endogenous polypeptide involved in the physiology, pharmacology and pathology of blood pressure control and many other phenomena related to the contraction of smooth muscles.

Rocha e Silva was the son of a psychiatrist, João Olavo da Rocha e Silva. He studied at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Brazil (later Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), lecturing in high schools while he was a student in order to support himself. Shortly after graduation he moved in 1937 to São Paulo, and was hired by the Instituto Biológico (Biological Institute), a state research institution. From 1940 to 1941, Rocha e Silva won a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to go to London, England, where he studied and worked with Heinz Schild at the University College London. In 1942 he returned to the Instituto Biológico and continued his research line on the role of histamine in the effects of animal venoms. At the Institute, he was soon appointed as the chairman of the Section of Biochemistry and Pharmacodynamics, a position he held until 1957. In that year, Rocha e Silva was invited to be the chairman of the Department of Pharmacology of the recently created Faculty of Medicine of Ribeirão Preto of the University of São Paulo, in the city of Ribeirão Preto, state of São Paulo, a position he held until his mandatory retirement in 1980. His health condition worsened shortly thereafter, and he died on 19 December 1983, at the age of 73.

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