Life
He was the second son of Dr. Carlos Chagas (1879–1934), an eminent scientist who is credited for the discovery of Chagas disease. His oldest brother was Evandro Chagas (1905–1940), also a physician and scientist specialized, like his father, in tropical medicine.
He studied medicine from 1926 to 1931 at the Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade do Brasil (presently the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. While a student he worked at Manguinhos, where the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz was founded by the eminent physician Dr. Oswaldo Cruz (1872–1917) and where his father worked, as well as at a hospital in Lassance, state of Minas Gerais, where his father had discovered Chagas disease. After graduation he went to become a director of this hospital during 1932. But what he really liked to do was biomedical research, following the example of his father and colleagues, so in the next years he worked with several leaders in the field of physiology, such as Miguel Osório de Almeida (1890–1952) and José Carneiro Felippe. One year after graduation, he accepted a teaching post as assistant professor at the Medical School, in the chair of Biological Physics. With the death of its incumbent, Prof. Lafayette Rodrigues Pereira, he became its chairman and full professor.
Feeling the need to specialize further in neurophysiology, Dr. Chagas Filho travelled to France, where he worked with René Wurmser and Alfred Fessard, in Paris, and to England, where he worked with A.V. Hill (1886–1977). Returning to Brazil, he established a Laboratory of Biophysics at the Medical School and assembled a group of students and researchers. In 1945 he achieved the elevation of the Laboratory to the Biophysics Institute, which in a short time became one of the most important and excellent research centers in Brazil. He was its director for a long time, as well as the dean of the Medical School. The Institute presently bears his name. Dr. Carlos Chagas Filho retired in 1980, but continued to work steadfastly almost until his death, at 89 years of age.
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