Abílio Fernandes
Abílio Fernandes (19 October 1906 Guarda, Portugal - 16 October 1994 Coimbra), was a Portuguese botanist and taxonomist from the Botanical Institute at the University of Coimbra who was married to Rosette Mercedes Saraiva Batarda (1916–2005), another Portuguese botanist and taxonomist. Fernandes was a student of Aurélio Quintanilha (1892–1987), botanist and geneticist.[1]
He is noted for his work on Amaryllidaceae, and compiling floras of Portugal, Macaronesia and Tropical Africa. He was the son of José Fernandes (1880-) and Maria Augusta Fernandes (1880-).
Fernandes was Quintanilha's student during the academic year 1926-27 and was invited to become teaching assistant in 1927. He became interested in the number and form of chromosomes in different species, later specialising in cyto-systematics, founding and becoming head of a research programme on cytotaxonomy at the University of Coimbra, where he stayed for the remainder of his career. Quintanilha stated that Fernandes's earliest works – including his thesis published in 1930, Study on the chromosomes of Liláceas and Amarilidáceas – are the first published in Portugal in which chromosomes were regarded as “carriers of the heritable characters”, representing thus “the beginning of a new branch of science among us, cytogenetics”[2][3]
Abílio Fernandes was married to the botanist Rosette Mercedes Saraiva Batarda (1 October 1916 – 28 May 2005) [4] and had 2 sons Eduardo Manuel Batarda Fernandes (1943) and José António Batarda Fernandes (1946). Some of her work was published in Flora Zambesiaca and she did a taxonomic revision of the families Avicenniaceae, Verbenaceae and Lamiaceae.[5]
Publications
- Flórula Vascular da Mata da Bufarda - Abílio Fernandes & Rosette Batarda Fernandes
- A Universidade de Coimbra e o Estudo da Flora e da Vegetação dos Paízes Africanos de Língua Oficial Portuguesa - Abílio Fernandes (1993)
References
- ^ Brummitt, R. K.; C. E. Powell (1992). Authors of Plant Names. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. ISBN 1-84246-085-4.
- ^ University of Lisbon-Faculty of Science
- ^ Interuniversity Centre for the History of Science and Technology
- ^ University of Coimbra Archived 2011-08-05 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Portuguese Genealogy Net
- ^ International Plant Names Index. A.Fern.
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