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Dr. Antonio Soda Merhy (Figure 1) was born in Mexico City on December 28, 1940. He studied medicine and afterwards the specialization in otolaryngology and head and neck surgery with the recognition from the Faculty of Medicine of the UNAM. He married to Mrs. Rocío González de Soda with whom formed a family of three children: Antonio, Anuar and Yamil. Dr. Soda was a physician attached to the Otolaryngology Department of the General Hospital "La Raza" Medical Center of the Mexican Institute of Social Security (1970-1982). He arrived to the National Institute of Pulmonary Diseases in 1980 as a key strategy for its transformation into National Institute of Respiratory Diseases (INER). He began as a inter consultative specialist and in less than a decade he managed to form the otolaryngology service and afterwards the otolaryngology and head and neck surgery department, which included the opening of the specialization course and the training of the first generation of specialists with the endorsement of the Faculty of Medicine of the UNAM.

Dr. Soda has fulfilled the fundamental responsibilities of our institute such as high speciality medical care, and he has trained the best level of human resources that practice the speciality from the Northern border of our country to the Southern cone of Latin America. He influenced the applied research that impacted several paperwork's that are still cited in the international texts of the speciality. He has always been characterized by his high level institutional nature, which led him to accomplish multiple distinctions of national and international order, among which are: member of the National Academy of Medicine, of the Mexican Academy of Surgery, of the American Academy of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, former Coordinator of the Academic Committee of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery of the Faculty of Medicine of the UNAM and he was Coordinator of the Medical Education Committee of the Ángeles Lomas Hospital and President of the Mexican Society and Councils of the speciality. In addition, he has received nearly 30 distinction and recognitions: Member of the Governing Board of the General Hospital "Dr. Manuel Gea González" (1998-2002), to University Merit for 40 years of academic services, UNAM (2012), Lifetime Achievement Award in the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases Ismael Cosío Villegas (2014), Ángeles Award 2014 (given by the Ángeles Health Services Group and the National Academy of Medicine), Biblos Award to a Lifetime Achievement 2019 and founder of The Ibero-American Group Cochlear Implants and Related Sciences (GICCA). All the previous could be enough to recognize the work of Dr. Soda, but I would like to add the last point about what may have more impact for the medical community and for our country, the National Cochlear Implants Program initiated under his leadership in 1999. This program has had the opportunity to rehabilitate children from low-income families and with one of the disabilities of more isolation and without the possibility of a full life, deafness. To this day, this program continues to put our institute as a leader. Based on all this baggage, Dr. Soda is considered by his peers as one of the pillars of the speciality in our country.

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