Luis Torres Díaz

Luis Torres Díaz (September 11, 1897 – 1988) was a Puerto Rican chemist and dean of the College of Pharmacy at the University of Puerto Rico. He is most widely known as the founder of the college's Museum of Pharmacy, the first museum dedicated to the history of a health profession in Puerto Rico. His publications include Breve historia de la farmacia en Puerto Rico / A Concise History of Pharmacy in Puerto Rico. Throughout his life, Torres also published poetry; his poems were collected under the title Cántigas del Hondo Amor y Otros Poemas.

Early life and education Luis Torres Díaz was born to Vicente Torres Cappa and Isabel Díaz Torres on September 11, 1897, in Peñuelas, Puerto Rico.

Career In 1919 to 1921, Torres was a partner in a pharmaceutical company in Río Piedras.

In 1925, he became an instructor in chemistry at the University of Puerto Rico, where he spent the remainder of his career. In 1928 he transferred to the College of Pharmacy, where he became an assistant professor in 1938 and in 1940 became a full professor and dean. It was renamed for him to the Luis Torres Díaz Pharmacy Museum of the School of Pharmacy; now located on the University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences Campus in San Juan, it has since amalgamated with the Medicinal and Poisonous Plants Garden and become the Museum of Pharmacy and Medicinal Plants (Museo de Farmacia y Plantas Medicinales). Nearly half of its collection is housed in Luis Torres Díaz Hall on the first floor of the Pharmacy and Students Deanship building.

Scientific publications Torres wrote a number of scientific books and articles, including Estudio Preliminar de una Dieta Usual en Puerto Rico, El Cobre y El Manganeso en La formación de la Hemoglobina, Estudio Fitoquímico de La Túa -Túa, and Breve historia de la farmacia en Puerto Rico / A Concise History of Pharmacy in Puerto Rico, published in Spanish and English in 1951.

In 1957, Torres wrote an article titled Pharmaceutical Education in Puerto Rico, published in the Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association. In 1974, Torres Diaz published a Puerto Rican pharmaceutical bibliography with commentary. The bibliography includes works written during three periods of Puerto Rican history. Early, Spanish Colonial, and 1898 change of sovereignty.

Poetry Torres also wrote poetry, and is considered a member of Puerto Rico's modernist school. His poems appeared in periodicals including El Mundo and Puerto Rico Ilustrado and in 1983 were published as a collected volume titled Cántigas del Hondo Amor y Otros Poemas.

Personal life and death Torres married Emma Luisa Vidal in 1923; they had three children. He died in 1988 in San Juan.