After the First World War, science passed through an extraordinarily productive period, making the most of the contacts established by Spanish scientists abroad thanks to JAE’s housing policy. For example, the creation of the Laboratorio y Seminario Matemático (Mathematic Laboratory and Seminar) by Julio Rey Pastor in 1915 propelled the translation into Spanish of Felix Klein’s texts; Albert Einstein’s 1923 visit spread his Theory of Relativity to a new and wider public; and the young Severo Ochoa’s link with JAE’s physiology laboratory allowed him to study with German physiologist Otto Meyerhof. These are just some examples of the achievements of the inter-war periods, one of the most crucial being the inauguration of the new Instituto Nacional de Física y Química building, financed by the Rockerfeller Foundation, in which the physicist Blas Cabrera, director of the centre, met Arnold Sommerfeld, Pierre Weiss and Paul Scherrer.
De izquierda a derecha, Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, Théophile E. de Donder, Owen Williams Richardson, Paul Langevin, Peter Debye, Abram Joffe y Blas Cabrera durante una reunión para preparar el Congreso Solvay de 1933, Bruselas, julio de 1932. Del libro Albert Einstein Archives, The Jewish National & University Library, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.