Cuban agronomist and botanist, José Ildelfonso Torralbas was a professor at the University of Havana and director of the Botanical Museum. After completing his education successfully in Cuba the Faculty of Medicine in Caracas, Venezuela, offered him a job which he undertook along with the accompanying duties the Venezuelan government tasked him with. Keen to return to his native Cuba, he left Venezuela at the end of the first war of independence and took up his post teaching at the university and at the museum. From 1871 he was a member of the Havana Academy of Sciences and in 1890 received a PhD from the University of Havana. The Celastraceae genus Torralbasia Krung and Urban was named in honour of him.

Sources:
F. A. Staflau and R. S. Cowan, 1976-1998, Taxonomic Literature, 2nd edition (TL-2)
J. S. Fernandez, 1907, "El Dr. José I. Torralbas" Anales de la Academia de Ciencias de la Habana, 40: 247-250.