José Mariano Mociño Suárez Lozano (24 September 1757 – 12 June 1820), or simply José Mariano Mociño, was a
naturalist
Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...
from
Mexico
Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...
.
After having studied philosophy and medicine, he conducted early research on the botany, geology, and anthropology of his country and other parts of North America.
Biography
He was born in
Temascaltepec (modern-day
Mexico State) in 1757. Being poor, he worked in many different jobs to study in the ''Seminario Tridentino de México'', where he devoted himself especially to physics, mathematics, botany, and chemistry. In 1778 he graduated in philosophy. In 1791 he was called to join the scientific expedition of
Martín de Sessé, the Royal Botanical Expedition, which had started in 1787. They traveled across New Spain, reaching the most inhospitable places of the
Empire
An empire is a political unit made up of several territories, military outpost (military), outposts, and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a hegemony, dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the ...
, being especially notable his trips to the
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest (PNW; ) is a geographic region in Western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though no official boundary exists, the most common ...
. Although the pay for his job was minimal, he created one of the most important natural history collections of his times.
Beginning in 1795, by order of
Charles IV, he made several journeys to examine the natural products of Mexico. He traveled more than 3,000 leagues and formed a valuable collection, including a considerable herbarium and a great number of sketches, which he took to Spain in 1803. There Mociño was two times secretary and four times president of the Royal Medicine Academy of Madrid.
Mociño sympathised with
Joseph Bonaparte, and when the French withdrew after the
Peninsular War
The Peninsular War (1808–1814) was fought in the Iberian Peninsula by Kingdom of Portugal, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom against the invading and occupying forces of the First French ...
, he was taken prisoner, accused of ''
afrancesado''. Finally, he managed to flee to France. In 1816 in
Montpellier
Montpellier (; ) is a city in southern France near the Mediterranean Sea. One of the largest urban centres in the region of Occitania (administrative region), Occitania, Montpellier is the prefecture of the Departments of France, department of ...
he met the naturalist
Augustin Pyramus de Candolle
Augustin Pyramus (or Pyrame) de Candolle (, , ; 4 February 17789 September 1841) was a Swiss people, Swiss botany, botanist. René Louiche Desfontaines launched de Candolle's botanical career by recommending him at a herbarium. Within a couple ...
, to whom he showed the collections he could save, and entrusted to him the manuscripts for a ''Flora Mexicana''.
Candolle brought him to Geneva, where he became professor in the
University of Geneva
The University of Geneva (French: ''Université de Genève'') is a public university, public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded in 1559 by French theologian John Calvin as a Theology, theological seminary. It rema ...
. In 1818 he returned to Spain. He asked Candolle to return his manuscripts, which Candolle did after having the talented botanical illustrator,
Jean-Christophe Heyland, make copies of the plates. The originals are deposited at the botanical garden of Madrid along with the manuscripts for a ''Flora de Guatemala''. He died in Barcelona, poor and blind, in 1820.
He was one of the most famous
American naturalists of the
colonial period. Among his publications were ''Descripción del Volcan
Jorullo en versos latinos'' (Mexico, 1801), and “Observaciones sobre la resina del
hule,” published in the ''Anales de Ciencias Naturales'' (Madrid, 1804).
Pablo de la Llave named the
resplendent quetzal ''Pharomachrus mocinno'' to honour his mentor Mociño, who was the first to
classify the bird.
References
Further reading
**
External links
Biography from the Government of the State of Mexico's website* Sessé y Lacasta, Martín de & Mociño y Losada, José Mariano.
Flora Mexicana, 1894'' at the Biblioteca Digital del Real Jardín Botanico CSIC
Plantæ Novæ Hispaniæ, 1893 at the Biblioteca Digital del Real Jardín Botanico CSIC
Attribution
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mocino, Jose Mariano
1757 births
1820 deaths
People from New Spain
Botanists active in North America
Mexican botanists