The city is a developed one including cultural and educational aspects. It has a permanent Symphony Orchestra and a Company of Classical Ballet (Ballet del Sur) with an associate School of Classic Dances. For further education there are two tertiary institutes and two national universities. The first ones are Institute Superior Juan XXIII, (probably linked to the future UNISAL (standing for Universidad Salesiana) of the Salesians) and Institute Avanza (tertiary institute of humanities). National Universities are Facultad Regional Bahía Blanca Universidad Technological Nacional, devoted mainly to exact sciences and intended for students who do have a job for making a living, with formal activities in the evening; and Universidad Nacional del Sur (National University of the South), founded in January 1956. This last one has associated internationally-known institutes of research in biological, biochemical and technological sciences such as INIBIB and Institute de Oceanografia, among others. One of its Directors, Dr Francisco Barrantes, has been recently appointed as a member of the Executive Council of the Academy of Sciences of Latin America for the term 2006-2012. He is a reputed and well known scientist whose research on proteins of the Central Nervous System is considered as a reference for many of his international and national colleagues. Both national universities are free of tuition fees for all students.
Nobel laureate César Milstein was born and raised in Bahía Blanca. He studied at the Colegio Nacional and graduated as "Bachiller" in 1944. Then he moved to Buenos Aires where he completed his education and university degree, starting his research in Biochemistry at Institute Malbrán, after which he moved to the United Kingdom, becoming Professor at Cambridge University, where he was awarded Nobel Prize for the discovery and development of monoclonal antibodies for which he did not register any patent, which may otherwise have made him very rich
