{"id":16759,"date":"2012-09-03T19:42:12","date_gmt":"2012-09-03T22:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=16759"},"modified":"2012-12-05T20:51:15","modified_gmt":"2012-12-05T22:51:15","slug":"among-pioneers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/among-pioneers\/","title":{"rendered":"Among pioneers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"COLLECTION OF COMISS\u00c3O MEM\u00d3RIA IB-USP<\/span>

Magalh\u00e3es (in white shirt) in field research in Mongagu\u00e1, in the 1950'sCOLLECTION OF COMISS\u00c3O MEM\u00d3RIA IB-USP<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

At the end of the 1940s, when he was studying natural history at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP), Luiz Edmundo de Magalh\u00e3es often heard Theodosius Dobzhansky, a Russian biologist, naturalized North American, who worked in Brazil at the time, call biologist Crodowaldo Pavan \u201cdear little Pavan,\u201d as a sign of informality and friendship that did not mitigate the strictness with which they worked. Dobzhansky, after distinguishing himself worldwide because he helped to unify the principles of the theory of evolution with Mendelian genetics, set up the first research groups in genetics in the country \u2013 and Pavan soon stood out as one of the young talents.<\/p>\n

Magalh\u00e3es used to listen attentively to the long conversations of the two pioneers of Brazilian genetics and accompanied them when they went into the forests in search of drosophilae, the tiny flies adopted as model animals for genetic variability studies. He himself did a PhD in 1958 (the first one that Pavan ever supervised), a study on variations in the size of populations of Drosophila<\/em> of the willistoni <\/em>subgroup, found on the islands of Angra dos Reis, in Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\n

The son of a tradesman and seamstress, born in Guaxup\u00e9, Minas Gerais, he died on May 23, aged 84, after having left his own mark. As a professor at the Institute of Biosciences (IB) at USP, he identified new species of drosophilae and supervised biologists who today lecture at universities in S\u00e3o Paulo and other states. \u201cEdmundo always helped, never bothered anyone, and was very honest,\u201d says Andr\u00e9 Perondini, 72, a professor at the IB. \u201cWe talked a lot in the lab. There was still time to think, have a coffee, drink a beer; there was no rush as there is today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Magalh\u00e3es did not restrict himself to life in the laboratory and as his son Carlos said in a statement in the Folha de S. Paulo <\/em>newspaper, he dreamed of a solid scientific structure for the country. He headed the Federal University of S\u00e3o Carlos (UFSCar) from 1975 to 1979, helping to expand the number of courses from 6 to 19, and was the director of the Institute of Biosciences from 1985 to 1988; Perondini was his deputy director.<\/p>\n

His action is noted in various universities. At the end of his CV on the Lattes platform, Magalh\u00e3es stated that he had been a scientific advisor to FAPESP \u201csince its creation.\u201d At the request of the then scientific director, Rui Carlos Camargo Vieira, he led a commission that prepared a plan for improving S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s vivaria in the 1980s and resulted in the expansion of the vivarium at USP, at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and at the Federal University of S\u00e3o Paulo (Unifesp).<\/p>\n

Magalh\u00e3es was a board member and secretary general of the Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science (SBPC) from 1969 to 1991. A few days before dying, when he was in hospital, he handed the originals of the book Humanistas e cientistas do Brasil<\/em> [Humanists and Scientists of Brazil], which he organized, to Helena Nader, president of the SBPC. He was married to N\u00edcia Wendel de Magalh\u00e3es, a biology professor and environmentalist (they met when they studied together at USP). They had 6 children, who have given them 11 grandchildren and 1 great-granddaughter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luiz Edmundo de Magalh\u00e3es helped consolidate genetics in Brazil","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[237],"coauthors":[93],"class_list":["post-16759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","tag-genetics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16759\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16759"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=16759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}