João Murça Pires (1917-1994) was a Brazilian

botanist Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...

, who worked principally at the Instituto Agronômico do Norte.

Life

Pires was born in

Bariri Bariri is a municipality in the state of São Paulo in Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 milli ...

, Brazil on June 27, 1917. He received both his undergraduate (1942) and doctoral (1983) degrees from the

Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture, University of São Paulo The Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (Portuguese: ''Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz'', ESALQ) is a unit of the University of São Paulo involved with research, teaching and extension of services in agriculture, animal husband ...

. He was a member of the

Linnean Society of London The Linnean Society of London is a learned society dedicated to the study and dissemination of information concerning natural history, evolution, and taxonomy. It possesses several important biological specimen, manuscript and literature colle ...

and the

Brazilian Academy of Sciences The Brazilian Academy of Sciences ( pt, italic=yes, Academia Brasileira de Ciências or ''ABC'') is the national academy of Brazil. It is headquartered in the city of Rio de Janeiro and was founded on May 3, 1916. Publications It publishes a lar ...

in. He served twice as the President of the Botanic Society of Brazil. He was awarded a

John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the art ...

in 1982 in the field of plant sciences.

Work

He initiated the herbarium and botanical section at the Instituto Agronômico do Norte and founded the Department of Botany and the herbaria at the

Universidade de Brasília The Universiade is an international multi-sport event, organized for university athletes by the International University Sports Federation (FISU). The name is a portmanteau of the words "University" and "Olympiad". The Universiade is referred t ...

. He also helped restructure the Department of Botany at the

Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi The Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi (MPEG) is a Brazilian research institution and museum located in the city of Belém, state of Pará, Brazil. It was founded in 1866 by Domingos Soares Ferreira Penna as the Pará Museum of Natural History and Ethn ...

Belém Belém (; Portuguese for Bethlehem; initially called Nossa Senhora de Belém do Grão-Pará, in English Our Lady of Bethlehem of Great Pará) often called Belém of Pará, is a Brazilian city, capital and largest city of the state of Pará in t ...

, and the herbaria there is named after him. He collected, and described plants from the

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...

Legacy

He is the authority for at least 109

taxa In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; plural taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular nam ...

including:

References

Fellows of the Linnean Society of London Members of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences 20th-century Brazilian botanists 1917 births 1994 deaths {{Botanist-stub