Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Obituary

2009; Oxford University Press; Volume: 63; Issue: 9 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1558-5646.2009.00740.x

1558-5646

Paulo Alberto Otto,

Aquaculture Nutrition and Growth

Professor C. Pavan (left), having at his side Professor Th. Dobzhansky, at the occasion (1952) he was appointed full professor and head of the Department of Biology (now Department of Genetics and Evolutionary Biology) at the University of São Paulo (USP), São Paulo, Brazil. At the age of 89, Professor Crodowaldo Pavan died recently on April 3, in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. Born in Campinas, São Paulo, Pavan graduated in Biology (Natural History) from the University of São Paulo (USP) in 1941. While preparing his PhD dissertation under the supervision of Professor Andre Dreyfus, he actively participated in practically all scientific activities developed by Professor Theodosius Dobzhansky during his 1943 stay in Brazil. That year Pavan coauthored with Dobzhansky (in the journal Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.) the first of many important articles on the genetics of natural populations of Brazilian species of Drosophila. After obtaining his PhD degree in 1945 with a memorable dissertation on the evolution of blind cave fish (whose results were published in 1946 by the journal Am. Nat.), he joined Professor Dobzhansky at Columbia University (1945–1946); this direct collaboration with Professor Dobzhansky was resumed in 1948–1949 and 1955–1956, during his mentor's year-long stays in Brazil. From 1946 to 1951, all his published papers (with the exception of one article—also written in collaboration with Professor Dobzhansky—on the estimation of species and number of trees in the Amazonian forest) dealt with the cytogenetics, taxonomy, population genetics, and evolution of neotropical species of Drosophilidae, a general line of research he pursued throughout his life, in spite of having his attention moved to include parallel subjects such as the cytogenetical study of Sciaridae flies, the effects of microrganism infection on the functioning of polytene chromosomes, the applied study of Tephritidae fruit flies in the control of agricultural pests, and the investigation of bacterial symbiosis on legumes and animal tissues. Upon Professor Dreyfus's death in 1952, Pavan was appointed his successor in the direction of the Department of Biology as a full professor, where, with the exception of his activities in the United States, he worked uninterruptedly from his undergraduate days until his retirement. In addition to editing several scientific and didactic books, he produced more than 100 scientific contributions, most of them accepted by first-class international journals such as American Naturalist, Chromosoma, Ecology, Evolution, Experimental Cell Research, Genetics, Journal of Animal Ecology, Mutation Research, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Science. In the mid-60s, his studies of Sciaridae flies culminated in several important researches, which projected him internationally, such as the ones that led to the discovery of the part played by polytene chromosomes in nucleic acid metabolism and in cell differentiation. For a number of years he was an associate editor of Evolution and other important international and Brazilian periodicals. In 1964–1965 Professor Pavan worked at the Biology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (in Oak Ridge, Tennessee), and from 1968 to 1975 he was a full professor at the Department of Zoology of the University of Texas in Austin. Throughout his stay in the United States, Pavan kept his connection with the Department of Biology at USP (since 2005 Department of Genetics and Evolutionary Biology); that enabled him to take several of his fellow junior scientists to work with him at both institutions in the United States and to invite to Brazil several of his important associate American colleagues, thus establishing a fruitful interchange of scientists. Shortly after his return to Brazil in 1976, Professor Pavan retired (1978) from USP, working successively at the Biology Institute of the State University of Campinas, and, in the last years, at the Microbiology Department of the Biomedical Sciences Institute of USP. He held administrative positions at USP and had a marked influence on academic entities and societies in Brazil. He was president of the Brazilian Society of Genetics (1958–1960) and the Brazilian Association for the Advancement of Science (1981–1986). He also belonged to the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Medicine as well as to several foreign scientific societies such as the Physiography Society of Lund in Sweden, the Academies of Sciences of Lisbon (in Portugal) and Chile, and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Vatican. He also worked many years first as scientific director and president of Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo—FAPESP (in São Paulo, 1981–1984) and then of Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico—CNPq (in Brasília, the federal capital, 1986–1990), by far the two most important research granting institutions in Brazil. At the time Pavan started his scientific and academic activities, genetic research (especially on basic and animal genetics) in Brazil was still in its infancy, mainly when compared to the ongoing work in the area of applied agricultural genetics at Campinas and at the Agricultural School of USP at Piracicaba. Pavan (either alone or later with the help of some of his early collaborators, Antonio Brito da Cunha, Luiz Edmundo de Magalhães, and Oswaldo Frota Pessoa, and some of his early students, such as Newton Freire Maia and Francisco Salzano) had a decisive role not only on the development of animal and human genetics, bringing them up to international levels, but also on its divulgation and in the creation of many important university genetic centers all over Brazil. Most important of all, besides being a true scientific leader, Professor Pavan infected all with his genuine enthusiasm. We all, especially those who have had the unique privilege of knowing him personally, working with him, and learning from him, will greatly miss him.