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Physiologist, Musician, Composer Hector was born in Mexico City, Mexico. He was the second of seven boys born into a family of music writers and music players. His father, a famous violin player, studied to become a medical doctor. He became a plastic surgeon to make enough money to take care of his large family. Although he quit giving concerts, he never stopped playing the violin. So Hector grew up with music, medicine, and a large family.
Dealing with being sick
Hector was able to deal with the limits to his life by learning how to play the piano and write music and by learning how the human body works. Christmas presents at his house through the years were often microscopes, telescopes, or some type of biology model. As young teenagers, he and his brothers started a “School of Science” at their house and did experiments in chemistry and biology and studied rockets. Hector worked to keep up all his interests by studying how to play the piano, how to write music, and medicine. It was in the early 1960s that a special type of medicine that you breathed came into Mexico. It allowed people with asthma to live a more normal life. Having that type of medicine changed Hector’s life and meant no more rush trips to the hospital. Hector knew that he had to become a physiologist in order to learn how people listen to music, play music with their muscles, and breathe deeply with happiness. Learning to be a physiologistAfter going to school in Mexico City to study neuroscience (the study of the brain), Hector got a Master of Science degree in 1979. He then moved to Baltimore, Maryland in the United States to study more. He got his Ph.D. degree in Physiology in 1984. Dr. Rasgado stayed at the University of Maryland to do more research after getting his degree. He was then offered a job at the Chicago Medical School. He is working there now, studying how muscle cells change when you move your arm or breathe. Dr. Rasgado has worked with the American Physiological Society’s International Physiology Committee to help physiologists in Mexico and Latin and South America to have a chance to learn about the newest physiology work by going to meetings in their own country that are paid for in part by APS. Physiologists from the US go to those meetings to talk and it gives them a chance to see what others are doing in different countries. He came up with this idea and has worked hard over the last few years to get the program going. Family life If it hadn’t been for playing the piano, writing music, and
then playing it for other people, Dr. Rasgado would not have had a good time as
a child or young man. In fact, it was during one of those times he was playing
for people that he met a woman who he would later ask to be his wife. She
studies physics and works with him in his research. Being a physiologist has
allowed him to understand a little better how cells work, how you can play the
piano, and how you breathe.
Dr. Rasgado has three active young children and hopes that he will be able to teach them to love science and music like he was taught by his family. After all, being a physiologist and a musician are just two different ways to live life to the fullest and to try to give back a bit of happiness to other people and help them learn new things.
Writing a symphony
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