Abstract
The present article focuses on the life trajectory and the bibliographic production of the entomologist and science communicator Messias Carrera (1907-1994), presenting aspects of his personal profile, academic training and professional development. His role as a researcher in the Zoology Department of Secretaria de Agricultura, Indústria e Comércio do Estado de São Paulo, currently Museu de Zoologia of the Universidade de São Paulo, is emphasized, having worked mainly in the taxonomy of insects of the order Diptera and in science communication between the 1930s and 1990s. Carrera was a science researcher and communicator ahead of his time. His intellectual production, limited to the scientific, technological and “humanistic” spheres, adds important advances to the relative areas of knowledge.
Highlights
Messias Carrera (1907‐1994) was an important Brazilian entomologist who, during the decades of 1930 to 1990, worked with the taxonomy of insects of the order Diptera and with science communica‐ tion (Fig. 1)
Edited by: Rafaela Lopes Falaschi Received: 21/09/2020 Accepted: 04/11/2020 Published: 01/06/2021 the order Diptera, more especially of the families Asilidae and Syrphidae, he proposed several new taxa, even describing 36 in a single title (Carrera, 1949a). His production was even more expressive, having been published in several media, such as widely circulated news‐ papers and magazines, and awarded the Prêmio José Reis de Divulgação Científica e Tecnológica in 1987 (CNPq, 2010). Many of his texts served as starting points for several studies, some of which are well known by most Brazilian biologists, such as the book Entomologia para você (Entomology for you) (Fig. 2), where he makes it clear that: “Awakening a vocation is the author’s most vehement desire” (Carrera, 1973, p. 11)
The biobibliographic data related to Messias Carrera, referred to only as Carrera in this text, were gathered through the analysis of the following sourc‐ es: original titles of his work; biography and obituary published by Hitoshi Nomura (Nomura, 1995a, b); func‐ tional documents filed at the Museu de Zoologia of the Universidade de São Paulo (MZUSP); interviews with fam‐ ily members, employees at Universidade de São Paulo (USP), and other researchers who had contact with the studied author
Summary
Messias Carrera (1907‐1994) was an important Brazilian entomologist who, during the decades of 1930 to 1990, worked with the taxonomy of insects of the order Diptera and with science communica‐ tion (Fig. 1). Carrera published titles in several areas, but with an emphasis on science com‐ munication and the order Diptera study. In the others, Carrera shares co-authorship with several Brazilian researchers, such as Carlos Eduardo Machado-Allison, Hugo de Souza Lopes (1909‐1991) (Oliveira, 1989), John Lane, Karol Lenko (1914‐1975) (Nomura, 1991b), Lauro Pereira Travassos Filho, Lindolfo Rocha Guimarães (1908‐1998), Maria Aparecida Vulcano d’Andretta, and Nelson Papavero. The first article published by the author, in which new species were being described, was published in 1940 in the Arquivos de Zoologia do Estado de São Paulo (Carrera, 1940).
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