Pedro was born in Madrid on 27 September 1936. In late 1939, his parents brought the family to Paris to escape the fascist terror of Spain via a harrowing journey through the Pyrenees. Fearing the Nazi invasion, they fled to Colombia in 1940 and relocated to Chicago in 1947. Pedro started undergraduate studies at Princeton University in 1954 but found it stultifying and soon transferred to Washington University in St. Louis. He remained there for medical school, graduating in 1962. Pedro’s interest in medical research was influenced by giants at Washington University such as Carl and Gerty Cori, Bill Daughaday, Dave Kipnis, Oliver Lowry, Arthur Kornberg and Jack Strominger, along with classmates Stuart Kornfeld and Phil Majerus. After medical school, Pedro went to Johns Hopkins University for an internship and residency in internal medicine, determined to improve public health.

Pedro made his first major discovery as a medical resident. Noting the numerous patients in his care who had trouble with dairy products, he, along with intern Dean Lockwood and medical student Jack Caldwell, developed a test for lactose intolerance based on measurements of blood glucose and of lactase in small intestinal biopsies. This work — the first report of lactose intolerance1 — showed that about half of the 50 participants studied were lactose intolerant, attributed to lactase deficiency, and was done without any outside funding, technical assistance or faculty supervision.

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