Ponsà Fontanals, M.2011. Osvaldo Reig: La Vida Itinerante de un Biólogo Evolucionista (Osvaldo Reig: the Itinerant Life of an Evolutionary Biologist)

Abstract

M. Ponsa Fontanals 2011. Osvaldo Reig: La Vida Itinerante de un Biologo Evolucionista (Osvaldo Reig: the Itinerant Life of an Evolutionary Biologist). Eudeba (Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires), Buenos Aires, Argentina, 128 pp. ISBN 978-950-23-1865-3, price (paper), $12.00. In this biography, Montserrat Ponsa Fontanals offers an informative journey through the life and career of Osvaldo Reig, one of the foremost mammalogists, paleontologists, and evolutionary biologists of the 20th century (Roig 1992; Anonymous 2002). In so doing, she illustrates the importance of and interaction among 3 universal themes: career (here, science), family, and politics. I anticipate that most members of the American Society of Mammalogists who can read Spanish will find the book fascinating and worthwhile. The biography's structure is roughly chronological and follows Reig around Latin America (with brief stays in the United States and Europe) during turbulent times of the past century. The brief introduction gives the reader an overall feel for Reig—intelligent, outspoken, and controversial. The book then describes his childhood and adolescence in Argentina among (mostly immigrant) families of intellectuals and the educated business class. Succeeding chapters describe Reig's university days in Buenos Aires and La Plata (as a student activist), paleontological research at the Instituto Miguel Lillo (Universidad Nacional de Tucuman), 1st professorship (Universidad de Buenos Aires, where he began working on cytogenetics), and then short stints at Harvard University (via a Guggenheim Fellowship), Universidad Central de Venezuela, University College London (where he earned his Ph.D.), Universidad Austral de Chile, and back at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. The book then focuses on Reig's longer Venezuelan era, at the Universidad de los Andes and later the Universidad Simon Bolivar, where he undertook groundbreaking studies of speciation. …