Helia Bravo Hollis

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Helia Bravo Hollis (born August 30, 1905 in Mexico City , † September 26, 2001 ) was a Mexican botanist . Your official botanical author abbreviation is " Bravo ".

Life

Her parents were Manuel Bravo and Carlota Hollis de Bravo of English. Her father took part in the Mexican Revolution on the side of Francisco Madero and was murdered in 1913.

From 1919 Helia Bravo attended the preparatory Escuela Nacional Preparatoria in Mexico City. After acquiring the Bachillerato , she first began to study medicine at the Universidad Nacional de México , but in 1921 switched to the newly established course in biology . She initially dealt with protozoa and published nine articles on this in scientific journals as a student between 1921 and 1927. Helia Bravo was initially a lecturer at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria before Isaac Ochoterena hired her in 1929 to work at the UNAM's Institute of Biology. It was also he who drew her interest to cactus research , which was still largely neglected in Mexico at the time . Since 1930 she was responsible for the Herbario Nacional .

She completed her studies in 1931 with the thesis "Contribución al conocimiento de las cactáceas de Tehuacán" (Contribution to the knowledge of the cacti Tehuacán) as Maestra de Sciencias . In the following years, Helia Bravo undertook extensive field studies of the cactus vegetation in all parts of Mexico. In 1937 she published the standard work "Las Cactáceas de México" (The Cacti of Mexico), which was reissued in 1978 (Volume 1) and 1991 (Volumes 2 and 3) in a revised version. Her last book was published in 1995 "El interesante mundo de las cactáceas" (The interesting world of cacti).

Helia Bravo co-founded the Sociedad Mexicana de Cactología in 1950 , which she chaired for the next 20 years. Since the early 1950s, she held the Chair of Botany at UNAM . When the UNAM Botanical Garden was founded at her instigation in 1959, she took over its management.

Helia Bravo Hollis mainly dealt with the taxonomy of Mexican and Central American cacti. She published 162 articles in scientific journals, including the description of the new genus Backebergia , about 60 species descriptions and just as many changes in the taxonomy.

She retired in 1989 . Helia Bravo Hollis died in 2001, four days before her hundredth birthday.

Honors

She has received numerous awards, including the Cactus d'Or of the City of Monaco in 1980 and an honorary doctorate from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in 1985 .

After Helia Bravo several plant species as well as the cactus genera Heliabravoa Backeb. and named Bravocactus Doweld . Animal species were probably not named after her, but after her sister Dr. Margarita Bravo Hollis (* 1911), who was an eminent zoologist.

The desert part of the UNAM Botanical Garden and the Botanical Gardens of Tehuacán and Puerto Ángel are named Helia Bravos .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Zander, Robert .: The great zander: Encyclopedia of plant names . Ed .: Erhardt, Walter. tape 2 . Ulmer, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-8001-5406-7 , pp. 1892 .
  2. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Index of Eponymic Plant Names - Extended Edition. Index de Noms éponymiques des Plantes - Édition augmentée . Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 , doi : 10.3372 / epolist2018 ( bgbm.org [accessed April 10, 2020]).
personal data
SURNAME Bravo Hollis, Helia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bravo, Helia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mexican botanist
DATE OF BIRTH August 30, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Mexico city
DATE OF DEATH September 26, 2001