Marino Villavicencio Núñe

Marino Villavicencio Núñez (1922–2013) was born in Ancash, Peru, and studied at the National University of San Marcos where he obtained degrees in medicine (B.M. and M.D.). He then undertook further studies at the University of Chicago as a Fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, and at the Edsel B. Ford Institute for Medical Research. He conducted further research at the University of California, Berkeley, as a Guggenheim Fellow.

He was a professor of biochemistry in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of San Marcos where he also became director of the Centro de Investigación de Bioquímica y Nutrición, chair of the Biochemistry and Physiology Department, and founder of the first master’s program in biochemistry. He was named coordinator of the Organization of American States’ International Training Project for Biochemistry in Peru, vice president of the Sociedad Química del Peru, and coordinator of the biotechnology area for Peru’s Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONCYTEC). In 1987, he became professor emeritus of the University of San Marcos. This same institution awarded him a diploma and medal for “extraordinary merit.” As director of the Centro de Investigación de Bioquímica y Nutrición, he developed international exchange programs with institutions abroad and obtained grants for research and institutional development from the Rockefeller and Kellogg foundations, the Organization of American States, UNESCO, and the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences.

Among his publications are forty-three articles in international journals such as Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics and Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, in addition to several books, including a textbook on biochemistry.

Son: Jorge Villavicencio Grossman, Guggenheim Fellow in Music Composition, 2010