Dr. Juan Negrin Lopez (1892-1956) was a man of immense talent, energy, and socialist convictions who served the Spanish people in different capacities: a physiologist of international reputation, chairman of the medical faculty of the Complutense University in Madrid during the 1920s, an active member of the Parliamentary wing of the Socialist Party (1931-1936), Minister of Finance in the Popular Front government led by Francisco Largo Caballero during the Civil War (1936-1937), and Prime Minister (1937-1939). In all these ...
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Dr. Juan Negrin Lopez (1892-1956) was a man of immense talent, energy, and socialist convictions who served the Spanish people in different capacities: a physiologist of international reputation, chairman of the medical faculty of the Complutense University in Madrid during the 1920s, an active member of the Parliamentary wing of the Socialist Party (1931-1936), Minister of Finance in the Popular Front government led by Francisco Largo Caballero during the Civil War (1936-1937), and Prime Minister (1937-1939). In all these roles, Negrin was highly competent: improving the laboratories and experimental methods in physiology, obtaining scholarships for students, encouraging students to learn foreign languages, to read scientific literature in the original, and also to think of public health as a national public responsibility. As Minister of Finance he conceived of Spain's relatively large gold reserve as the only means by which the Republic could buy the quality of modern arms that were
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