Aziz Nacib Ab'Sáber (; October 24, 1924 – March 16, 2012) was a geographer and one of

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 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

's most respected scientists, honored with the highest awards of Brazilian science in

geography Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, an ...

geology Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other Astronomical object, astronomical objects, the features or rock (geology), rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology ...

ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overl ...

and

archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsc ...

. Graduated in geography, he was a president and honorary president of the

Sociedade Brasileira para o Progresso da Ciência Sociedade Brasileira para o Progresso da Ciência (Portuguese for ''Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science'') is a Brazilian scientific society created in 1948 by several prominent scientists, with the aim of promoting science, culture and ...

(Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science),

Emeritus Professor ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

of the

University of São Paulo The University of São Paulo ( pt, Universidade de São Paulo, USP) is a public university in the Brazilian state of São Paulo. It is the largest Brazilian public university and the country's most prestigious educational institution, the bes ...

and member of the highest rank - Order Grão-Cruz in Earth Sciences - of the Academy of Science. Among the awards, he has received the UNESCO Prize on Science and the Environment in 2001 and the Prize to the Intellectual of Brazil in 2011. The contributions of Ab'Saber to science range from the first research of oil camps in Brazil's northeast to surveys of Brazil's natural realms and the restoration of the history of forests, camps and primitive humans over geologic time in South America. He made central contributions to biology, South American archaeology, and to Brazilian ecology, geology and geography. He has published more than 480 works, most of them scientific publications. Among his scientific proposals are FLORAM, the Code of biodiversity and his theory of refuges related to the Amazones. Ab'Sáber was the first person to classify scientifically the Brazilian and South-America territory in morphoclimatic domains. He also contributed to the "

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

refuge hypothesis", an attempt to explain the distribution of

Neotropical The Neotropical realm is one of the eight biogeographic realms constituting Earth's land surface. Physically, it includes the tropical terrestrial ecoregions of the Americas and the entire South American temperate zone. Definition In bioge ...

taxa as a function of their isolation in

forest A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...

fragments during

glacial A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate betwe ...

periods, which allowed populations to

speciate Speciation is the evolutionary process by which populations evolve to become distinct species. The biologist Orator F. Cook coined the term in 1906 for cladogenesis, the splitting of lineages, as opposed to anagenesis, phyletic evolution within ...

. He died in 2012 following a heart attack.Geographer Aziz Nacib Ab'Sáber Dies
. Mar 16, 2012

Selected publications

* Ab'Saber, A.N. 2010, , BECA,2010; 558 pp * Ab'Sáber, A. N. 1982. The paleoclimate and paleoecology of Brazilian Amazonia. In ''Biological Diversification in the Tropics''. New York:Columbia University Press. p. 41-59. * Ab'Sáber, A. N. 1983. . vol. 40, p. 41-55. * Ab'Sáber, A. N. 1986. . São Paulo:CNPq. p. 88-123. * Ab'Sáber, A. N. 1989. . vol. 5, p. 4-20. * Ab'Sáber, A. N. 1990. . vol. 5, p. 19-62. * Ab'Sáber, A. N. 1990. . vol. 4, p. 149-174. * Ab`Saber, A. N. Ecossistemas do Brasil. Metalivros, 2006.

References

External links

Ab'Saber's interview on Brazil and the world situation, 1/2, 2010

Ab'Saber's interview on Brazil and the world situation, 2/2
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ab'saber, Aziz 1924 births 2012 deaths People from São Paulo (state) Brazilian people of Arab descent Brazilian geographers 20th-century Brazilian geologists Recipients of the Great Cross of the National Order of Scientific Merit (Brazil) University of São Paulo faculty

Selected publications

References

Further reading

External links