Andalusia is, after Madrid and Catalonia, the third autonomous region in scientific production; 60 per cent of the scientific produced in the south of Spain comes from Granada and Seville, especially from universities (78.8 per cent), according to the book “Research and science in the periphery. A historical approach to Granada (centuries 13th-20th)”, of Professor Guillermo Olagüe de Ros, which has just been edited by the University of Granada.
Guillermo Olagüe de Ros, doctor of Medicine and Professor of Science History in the University of Granada, cites Moya-Anegón and Solís Cabrera referring to the period from 1998 to 2001 in which the relevant Andalusian contribution represented the 14.4 per cent, and a 0.33 of the world total.
In this book, Professor Olagüe de Ros reports scientific activity in Granada between centuries 13th and 20th, directly related to the University. The same author published in 2001 in this collection “Founded on solid rock: one hundred and twenty years of teaching, welfare and research labour in the Faculty of Medicine of Granada (1857-1976)», a book that analysed in depth the activity of the Faculty of Medicine during such period.
Olagüe de Ros also analyses, in this volume, the relationship of the scientific activity of Granada with Andalusia, and this with Spain, as well as the influence on this activity of certain economic and industrial factors, particularly the establishment of support measures set since the beginning of the 20th century in favour of the national scientific activity.
According to Professor Guillermo Olagüe de Ros, “the changes of the last 40 years have substantially modified the historic scene of research in Spain and, of course, in Andalusia. Besides the universities and the centres of the CSIC (Higher Council of Scientific Research) there are now hospital institutions depending on the Insalud or Health Departments with a higher and higher participation share in national bio-sanitary research.”
The author of this book points out the special historical characteristics affecting the cultivation of science in Andalusia and Granada in particular: “Secular individualism –says– besides the growing consolidation of competitive groups at present, is the reason for the special attention I have paid in this work until the 70´s, specifically until the death of Franco (1975), to certain personages from an institutional perspective”.
Reference:
Professor Guillermo Olagüe de Ros. Department of Pathological Anatomy and Science History. University of Granada
Phone number: 958 243512
E-mail: golague@goliat.ugr.es
