Émil Goeldi

Émil August Goeldi
Born August 28, 1859
Ennetbühl, Upper Toggenburg District,
Sankt Gallen, Switzerland
Died July 5, 1917 (1917-07-06) (aged 57)
Bern, Switzerland
Citizenship Swiss and Brazilian
Nationality Swiss
Fields Zoology, Archaeology, Public health
Institutions Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Brazil
Alma mater Friedrich Schiller Universität, Jena
Universität Leipzig, Germany
Doctoral advisor Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel
Other academic advisors Karl Georg Friedrich Rudolph Leuckart
Known for Reorganizer of Goeldi Museum
Influences Ernst Haeckel
Influenced Emilie Snethlage
Notable awards Life-Director of museum renamed for him
Author abbrev. (botany) Goeldi
Author abbrev. (zoology) Goeldi
Notes
Goeldi's legacy is the still-functioning Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi.

Émil August Goeldi (var. Göldi, var. Emílio Augusto Goeldi) (August 28, 1859 – July 5, 1917 in Bern), was a Swiss-Brazilian naturalist and zoologist. He was the father of Oswaldo Goeldi, a noted Brazilian engraver and illustrator.

Biography

Goeldi studied zoology in Jena, Germany with Ernst Haeckel, and in 1884 he was invited by Ladislau de Souza Mello Netto, the influential director of the Brazilian "Museu Imperial e Nacional," to work at that institution. Goeldi arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1885 to work in the National Museum (now the Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro. In May 1890, he was fired, due to political circumstances related to the proclamation of the Republic and the exile of his principal benefactor, Emperor D. Pedro II.

He was then 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 by Domingos Soares Ferreira Penna. He arrived on 9 June 1894 in Belém. In his pioneering work, Goeldi was helped by several other foreign researchers, such as the Swiss botanist Jacques Huber (1867–1914), zoologist Emilie Snethlage (1868–1929), geologists Friedrich Katzer (1861–1925), and Alexander Karl von Kraatz-Koschlau (1867–1900), and Adolpho Ducke (1876–1959), entomologist, ethnographer and botanist.

In 1902, the "Museu Paraense de História Natural e Ethnography" was renamed in his honor. It is now called the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. In 1905 Émil Goeldi renounced his post, due to ill health, and returned to Switzerland where he died in Bern, in 1917, at the age of only 58. Hüber, then Snethlage and Ducke succeeded him as general directors of the Goeldi Museum in Belém.

Contributions

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

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

In other scientific fields

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 so. His 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.

Publications by Goeldi

References

  1. ↑ Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2013). The Eponym Dictionary of Amphibians. Pelagic Publishing. p. 80. ISBN 978-1-907807-44-2.
  2. ↑ IPNI.  Goeldi.
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