The Rockefeller Foundation the dynamics of biomedical research in São Paulo: actors, networks and institutions in the constitution and consolidation of the academic fields of physiology, biochemistry and pharmacology (1916-1962)

• Grant number: 21/11342-6
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: February 01, 2022
• End date: January 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Science
• Principal Investigator: Maria Gabriela Silva Martins da Cunha Marinho
• Grantee: Maria Gabriela Silva Martins da Cunha Marinho
• Host Institution: Centro de Engenharia, Modelagem e Ciências Sociais Aplicadas (CECS). Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC). Ministério da Educação (Brasil). Santo André , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Ana Lúcia Lana Nemi ; André Mota ; Cristina de Campos
• Associated scholarship(s): 22/04390-7 - The Rockefeller Foundation and the Dynamics of Biomedical Research in São Paulo. Actors, Networks and Institutions in the Constitution and Consolidation of the Areas of Physiology, Biochemistry and Pharmacology. (1916-1962), BP.TT; 22/03902-4 - The Rockefeller Foundation the Dynamics of Biomedical Research in São Paulo. Actors, Networks and Institutions in the Constitution and Consolidation of the academic fields of Physiology, Biochemistry and Pharmacology. (1916-1962), BP.TT

Abstract

In the most expressive period of its operations in Brazil, between the 1920s and 1960s, the Rockefeller Foundation maintained differentiated activities in two capitals, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The office that hosted and centralized its operations in the national territory was maintained in the city of Rio, then the federal capital. The project works with the hypothesis that the guidelines implemented by the Rockefeller Foundation from Rio de Janeiro specialized in public health actions - with emphasis on prophylaxis and anti-epidemic campaigns, in particular Yellow Fever -, while São Paulo has become a space in which interventions have focused primarily on the field of so-called scientific philanthropy, whose emphasis is on funding educational and research institutions. The project is based on the understanding that studies on the Rockefeller Foundation's work around Public Health are much more consolidated than those on funding for scientific research. Thus, it intends to identify, collect, and analyze information that provides support for the formulation of an interpretative framework about the resources mobilized in the period from 1916 to 1962 that ensured the differentiation of São Paulo in the scope of the Rockefeller Foundation's operations in the country. To this end, it seeks to analyze the trajectory of funding for biomedical research in São Paulo in the formation or consolidation of Physiology, Biochemistry and Pharmacology. It points out as an unfolding of the general hypothesis of investigation the premise that the Rockefeller Foundation constituted a decisive variable in the consolidation of biomedical research in São Paulo by transferring substantive and persistent resources that provided the formation of researchers, creation of laboratories, implementation or consolidation of local institutions, many of which have become a national reference with significant international dialogue. It is also expected to deepen the meanings and contents of the philanthropy proposed and exercised by the Rockefeller Foundation in São Paulo. (AU)