Oswaldo Paulo Forattini: epidemiologista, entomologista e humanista

Abstract

Born on January 10, 1924, in Rosario de Santa Fe, Argentina, and naturalized Brazilian in 1946, Professor Forattini was the only child of immigrant parents from Italy who arrived in Brazil at the early of the 1930s. He grew up in a fam-ily environment in which he spoke in Portuguese to his father, and in French and Italian to his mother. As well as mastering these three languages, he also became fl uent in Spanish and English and had a great interest in studying Latin. As a scholar, he advocated that books should be read in the language in which they were written. One of the fi rst books that he had the pleasure of receiving as a gift from his mother, on his twelfth birthday, was a copy of The Divine Comedy, written in archaic Italian.Because he was the only child of a couple without any family in Brazil, and because of the intellectual training that he received with his parents’ encourage-ment, he became passionate about literature, history, classical music and arts. From a very young age, he would go to concerts at the Municipal Theater of Sao Paulo on Sundays, and he would listen to classical music every day. In this way, he was able not only to identify the composer, but also the orchestra and soloist. Nonetheless, he also enjoyed other kinds of music, such as jazz, blues and regional music and used to read and write poetry. Therefore, Professor Forattini was very familiar with many works in depth and could describe musical pieces and works of literature, history and art in detail. He was a lover of words and life.During his secondary school education in the city of Sao Paulo, he thought about studying history, but with time he entered the University College to sit the university entrance examination for the medical course. Classifi ed in fi rst place, he became a student in the Faculdade de Medicina (School of Medicine) of the Universidade de Sao Paulo, in 1946.Just after graduating in medicine in 1949, Professor Forattini was accepted into what was then the Faculdade de Higiene e Saude Publica (School of Hygiene and Public Health) of the Universidade de Sao Paulo as an assistant lecturer in the Department of Parasitology and Rural Hygiene. Thus he began his university career. He started conducting studies within medical entomology in 1950, with the researcher John Lane, and subsequently within public health, in 1957. In May 1954, at the age of 30, Professor Forattini was awarded the title of Professor through examination of his thesis on “Algumas observacoes sobre biologia de fl ebotomos, em regiao da Bacia do Rio Parana (Diptera, Psychodidae), (Brasil)” (Some observations on the biology of phlebotomine sandfl ies in the region of the Parana River Basin). Five years later, he obtained the position of Adjunct Professor of the Chair of Applied Parasitology and Rural Hygiene through competition. In 1966, Professor Forattini achieved the position of Chair of Epidemiology, through presenting a thesis under the title “Investigacoes sobre focus naturais de arbovirus” (Investigations on natural foci of arboviruses), and in 1970 he took up the position of Head of the Department of Epidemiology. At the Department, “he printed the vision of the epidemiologist, beyond or above the speci fi c areas of knowledge” in the words of Professor Maria Lucia Lebrao, current Head of the Department.