Catholic scientists: Jaime Ferrán y Clúa, physician and bacteriologist

Ferrán was a Spanish physician who took an interest in the work of Pasteur in bacteriology. At that time, the role of bacteria in the etiology of numerous diseases was demonstrated, and from there Ferrán began his work in bacteriology and vaccine development, using a home laboratory in Tortosa.

After spending time in Marseille studying a cholera epidemic in 1884 on behalf of Barcelona City Council, he developed an anti-cholera vaccine in his laboratory that was used during an epidemic in the province of Valencia (the first anti-bacterial vaccine used on humans during an epidemic), although its widespread use was subsequently banned following a controversy in which politics and science became intertwined. He later took charge of the Municipal Microbiological Laboratory of Barcelona, where he produced and improved Pasteur's rabies vaccine. He also developed vaccines against yellow fever, typhus, and bubonic plague, and perfected the production of anti-diphtheria serum.

Later, in 1905, he was dismissed from the Laboratory, again after a controversy involving both science and politics, and took refuge in his own Ferrán Institute, where he spent the rest of his days researching tuberculosis. He described the multi-stage life cycle of the bacterium and developed an anti-alpha vaccine, which did receive official support and was used in Spain, Argentina, and Uruguay, coexisting with the French BCG vaccine.

Ferrán was honored by the French Academy of Sciences and received tributes in many countries. In 1950, the Jaime Ferrán Institute of Microbiology was created at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), which in 1953 gave rise to the microbiology section of the Biological Research Center in Madrid. Today, the Spanish Society of Microbiology awards the Jaime Ferrán Prize in his honor.

He had strong Catholic convictions. He said that “anyone who does not believe in God is either ignorant or has no brain.". Because nothing works without winding it up, like a clock, like a car. But who sets this great work of creation in motion? He therefore found in the regularities of nature a sign of the existence of a Creator who had brought it into being.