Abstract
The aim of this article is to present the life and professional trajectory of José Cuatrecasas Arumí (1903-1996), one of the 20th century's most important Spanish botanists. Therefore, this is a historical study that intends to link the historical circumstances Cuatrecasas experienced with his training as a botanist. This Catalan botanist developed his work in various settings (Barcelona, Madrid, Geneva, Berlin) from his early studies to his doctorate and postdoctoral training, but he began to take an interest in tropical flora from the late 1920s and, more importantly, from the 1930s onwards, when he obtained a chair of botany at the Facultad de Farmacia of the Universidad de Madrid and also became part of the Real Jardín Botánico of Madrid by directing its Tropical Flora Section. The Civil War permanently disrupted the development of his scientific career in Spain, as his Republican militancy forced him into exile. Initially in Colombia and later in the United States, Cuatrecasas continued his lines of research on tropical flora, completing them in the 1960s with an ambitious project in the field of Neotropical Flora. This is how the life and scientific curriculum of one of the best Spanish botanists of the 20th century was forged.
Highlights
Botanist by vocationJosé Cuatrecasas was born on 19 March, 1903, in a small village in the Girona Pyrenees, Camprodon, where –according to his testimony– he was educated by his parents in an environment “de recia tradición cristiana y rigurosa disciplina moral y de trabajo” [of strong Christian tradition and rigorous moral and work discipline]3
The aim of this article is to present the life and professional trajectory of José Cuatrecasas Arumí (1903– 1996), one of the 20th century’s most important Spanish botanists
Some of the most outstanding episodes of the history of Spanish botany in the 20th century have been influenced by the figure of José Cuatrecasas Arumí, whose scientific career began to focus on tropical botany from the 1930s onwards and who, after the Spanish Civil War, continued a line of research enhanced by his exile in Colombia and the United States, where he was the driver and head of a Commission for the study of Neotropical Flora
Summary
José Cuatrecasas was born on 19 March, 1903, in a small village in the Girona Pyrenees, Camprodon, where –according to his testimony– he was educated by his parents in an environment “de recia tradición cristiana y rigurosa disciplina moral y de trabajo” [of strong Christian tradition and rigorous moral and work discipline]3. Cuatrecasas belonged to that generation, but so did Geologist José Royo, Entomologist Cándido Bolívar, and many other names of young scientists and intellectuals who came into existence under the Junta’s pensions and the laboratories of the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales and the Real Jardín Botánico, among others: “estos investigadores abordaron una modernización de contenidos y métodos científicos, teniendo como horizonte no tanto la superación del retraso acumulado al que se habían enfrentado generaciones anteriores como el desarrollo de programas de investigación homologables internacionalmente, aunque fuera en campos concretos” (Casado de Otaola, 2000: 276). That was enough to give rise to the Tropical Flora Section of the Jardín Botánico, officially established in March 1933 and directed by Cuatrecasas It had begun operating in 1932 after a trip by the Catalan botanist to Colombia, representing the JAE, to participate in the bicentennial events of José Celestino Mutis (Huber, 1996). The Ruiz y Pavón Herbarium was sent to Berlin for its study and on its return to Madrid, it constituted the initial nucleus of the tropical flora collections on which JAE scholarship holder Miguel Martínez and preparador (Assistant Curator) Antonio Rodríguez worked
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