Gabriella Morreale de Escobar

Morreale was born in 1930 in Milan, Italy. Her father, Eugenio Morreale, was a Sicilian biologist and diplomat, and her mother, Emilia de Castro, was a biologist and a curator for the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano (Milan Natural History Museum).[1] She attended schools in Vienna, Austria and Baltimore, United States, before finishing the Baccalaureate in Málaga, Spain. She studied chemistry at the University of Granada, earning a doctoral degree.[2] Her doctoral thesis showed that the incidence of endemic goitre in the Alpujarras region was closely linked to iodine deficiency.[3] In 1953, she married Francisco Escobar del Rey, with whom she would collaborate for the rest of her scientific career.[2]

Morreale and Escobar travelled to Leiden, the Netherlands, to perform post-doctoral research on thyroid hormone metabolism using radioisotopes of iodine. They returned to Spain in 1958 and began working in the Spanish National Research Council.[4] From 1963 to 1975, she led the thyroid studies division of the Gregorio Marañón Health Research Institute in Madrid.[5] In 1974, Morreale and Escobar became employed by the Autonomous University of Madrid, where they co-founded the Instituto de Investigaciones Biomedicas. Morreale's early research demonstrated through animal studies that thyroxine (T4) is converted to triiodothyronine (T3),[4] and she developed sensitive radioimmunoassays for the detection of T3 and T4.[2] She showed that, in pregnant women, maternal thyroid hormones are transferred via the placenta to the fetus and maternal-fetal transfer of T4 is important for fetal brain development.[4] She implemented a national newborn screening program for congenital hypothyroidism in Spain and her research led to the introduction of iodised salt in Spain to prevent endemic goitre caused by iodine deficiency.[2][4]

Morreale was a co-founder of the European Thyroid Association and served as its president from 1978 to 1980.[4] She was awarded an honorary doctorate in medicine from the University of Alcalá in 2001[5] and became an honorary member of the European Society of Endocrinology in 2008.[1] She died on 4 December 2017 at 87 years old.[2]