José Arce

José Arce (1881 to 1968) was an Argentine surgeon, anatomist, politician and diplomat. Born at an estancia near Lobería in Buenos Aires Province, he began medical studies at the University of Buenos Aires at fifteen and graduated in 1903 with the gold medal of his class. By twenty-five he was a surgeon and professor of anatomy at the university, and he later also taught surgery, representing Argentina at the Latin American Medical Congress in Montevideo in 1907. He led the Medical Society of Argentina in 1911, and in 1941 received a national prize in applied science for a book on preoperative pneumothorax. His public career ran alongside medicine: he sat in the Buenos Aires city legislature, served several terms in the national Chamber of Deputies, was rector of the University of Buenos Aires from 1922 to 1926 and sponsored the law that created the building of its Faculty of Medicine. Later he was Argentina's ambassador and representative at the United Nations, and presided over the General Assembly's 1948 special session. He spent years in exile during the government of Juan Perón.