Erik Leonard Ekman

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Erik L. Ekman, at some time before 1917

Erik Leonard Ekman (Stockholm 1883-Santiago de los Caballeros 1931) was a Swedish botanist and explorer .

[edit] Biography

Erik Leonard Ekman was born into a low-income household with 5 children on October 14, 1883. Due to economic shortcomings, the family moved when he was 11 to the central-Sweden town of Jönköping. It was here that, while at school, his passion for botanical collections started. He later obtained his bachelor's degree in 1907 at Lund University in southern Sweden and was offered free passage on a ship to Argentina with a Swedish shipping company. There, he spent 3 months in Misiones collecting plants, aided greatly by the Swedish colony that had established in that area. While there, he was offered a position as the Regnellian amanuensis at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, which he gladly accepted. He started his service at the museum in 1908. Thanks to financial support from the Regnell fund, he was able to travel widely through Europe and study with many of the prominent botanists of the time.

Ekman presented his doctoral dissertation at Lund in 1914. On the same year, he was supposed to go on the third Regnellian expedition to South America. His goal was Brazil, but Ekman got an assignment from professors Ignatius Urban (from Berlin) and C. Lindman (from Stockholm) to make short stops on Cuba (1 month) and Hispaniola (8 months) to collect specimens for Urban's "Symbolae Antillanae" botanical project. Ekman agreed to do so under protest, but it all worsened later by the further delayement of two years of his original plan to go to Brazil because of the onset of World War I, political unrest in Haiti, and a plague epidemic in Cuba. Ekman landed in Havana in 1917 and he remained in Cuba for 10 years, except for a short visit to Haiti in on the same year of arrival. After several arguments with, and pressures from, the Swedish Royal Academy of Science in Stockholm, Ekman finally went back to Haiti in 1924 where he started an intensive field work period until 1928, when he went to the Dominican Republic to conduct more studies.

By the end of 1930 Ekman had decided to finally fulfil his original mission: Brazil. However, this trip never occurred, since Ekman suddenly died at the age of 47 on January 15, 1931, in the city of Santiago de los Caballeros in the Dominican Republic. He died from influenza after having been battered and weakened by pneumonia, bouts of malaria and black water fever. He never returned to Sweeden after he left it for the second time.

Ekman was buried in Santiago de los Caballeros where also a statue and a plaque have been erected to honor him. There are also streets in both Santiago and Santo Domingo that bear his name. In Cuba there is a special department in the Botanical Garden named after Ekman, which contains plants species which are related to his works.

[edit] Legacy

Ekman contributed to the knowledge of the Caribbean flora more than any other previous scientist had done. He described more than 2,000 species new science (a great many of which are named after him), more remarkably so since by that period the flora of the Caribbean was considered to be pretty well documented. His collections are still very actively used in the research on the West-Indian flora. He collected around 36,000 numbers, which with duplicates amounts to more than 150,000 specimens. Ekman also did some geographical discoveries, he drew new maps of the mountains of Haiti and was one of the first to more accurately measure the highest mountain in the Caribbean, the Pico Duarte. Ekman also collected birds, mammals and reptiles, of which several species also bear his name, like the Hispaniolan nightjar (Caprimulgus ekmani).

The Swedish Foundation Instituto Ekman was established in 1991 in the honour of him. The aims of the Foundation are to intensify the scientifical and cultural exchange between Sweden and the Caribbean countries. A biographical work on Ekman is ongoing (authors Thomas A. Zanoni (NY) and Roger Lundin (S)). The biography will deal with the Ekman's life as well as his work.