Émil Goeldi

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Émil Goeldi

Émil August Goeldi (var. Göldi, var. Emílio Augusto Goeldi) (b. August 28, 1859; d. July 5, 1917 in Zurich), was a Swiss-Brazilian naturalist and zoologist. He studied in Germany with Ernst Haeckel, and arrived in Brazil in 1880 to work in the National Museum (Museu Nacional) in Rio de Janeiro. After a while, he was fired, due to political circumstances related to the proclamation of the Republic and the exile of his benefactor, Emperor D. Pedro II. He was invited by the governor of the state of Pará, Lauro Sodré, to reorganize the Pará Museum of Natural History and Ethnography, in Belém, which had been founded in 1866. He arrived in 9 June 1894. In 1902, the Museum was renamed in his honor as Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. In his pioneering work, Goeldi was helped by several other foreign researchers, such as the Swiss botanist Jacques Huber (1867-1914), zoologist Emilia Snethlage (1868-1929), geologists Katzer and Kraatz and Adolpho Ducke (1876-1959), ethnographer and botanist.

Émil Goeldi renounced his post, due to ill health, and returned to Switzerland in 1905 where he died in Zurich, in 1917, at the age of only 58. Huber, then Snethlage and Ducke succeeded him as general directors of the Goeldi Museum in Belém.

Goeldi was primarily a zoologist and described many new Brazilian species of birds and mammals. Some of the species which bear his name are:

Goeldi's Antbird - Myrmeciza goeldii
Goeldi's Marmoset - Callimico goeldii
Goeldi's Frog - Flectonotus goeldii

Several other species were named in honour of Émil Goeldi, such as:

Acropyga goeldii, Camponotus goeldii, Azteca goeldii, Pachycondyla goeldii, Crematogaster torosa goeldii, Mycocepurus goeldii, Procryptocerus goeldii, Acanthoponera goeldii, Brachymyrmex goeldii, Dorymyrmex goeldii dubius, Paratrechina goeldii, Megalomyrmex goeldii, Myrmelachista goeldii, Neivamyrmex goeldii, Solenopsis goeldii, Pheidole goeldii and Cephalotes goeldii, all species of South American ants described by Forel;
Protambulyx goeldii, a moth;
Dubioniscus goeldii, a garden pillbug (isopod);
Rio Big-Tooth Frog, Megalelosia goeldii, a frog
Trichomycterus goeldii, a pencil catfish;
Cynopotamus goeldii, a Characidae fish;
Goeldi's Pimelodid, Duopalatinus goeldii, a Pimelodidae freshwater fish;
Goeldi's Hemiodus, Hemiodopsis goeldii, another fish.
Cheirocerus goeldii, also a catfish;
Simulium goeldii, a blackfly from the Amazon Rainforest;
Philodendron goeldii, a philodendron plant.

But Goeldi was also recognized as an important early figure in public health and epidemiology in Brazil, because he studied the mechanism of transmission of yellow fever and advocated the importance of fighting the mosquito as the vector of the disease, several years before Oswaldo Cruz did it.

Goeldi's extensive scientific research on the geography, geology, flora, fauna, archeology, ethnography and socio-economical conditions of the present day region of Amapá was very important to end the Contestado territorial litigation between France and Brazil, ceding the territory to Brazil on December 1, 1900, by the international decision of the court of Bern.