Emil Racoviță | |
---|---|
Born | Emil Gheorghe Racoviță 15 November 1868 |
Died | 19 November 1947 79) | (aged
Resting place | Hajongard Cemetery, Cluj-Napoca |
Nationality | Romanian |
Alma mater | University of Paris |
Known for |
|
Scientific career | |
Fields | Biology, speleology, zoology |
Institutions | Babeș-Bolyai University |
Thesis | Le lobe cephalique et l’encéphale des Annélides Polychète (1896) |
Doctoral advisor | Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers |
Emil Gheorghe Racoviță (Romanian: [eˈmilˈrakovit͡sə] ; 15 November 1868 – 19 November 1947) was a Romanian biologist, zoologist, speleologist, and Antarctic explorer.
Together with Grigore Antipa, he was one of the most noted promoters of natural sciences in Romania. Racoviță was the first Romanian to have gone on a scientific research expedition to the Antarctic. He was an influential professor, scholar and researcher, and served as President of the Romanian Academy from 1926 to 1929.
Born in Iași, he grew up on a family estate, in Șurănești, Vaslui County, he started his education in Iași, where he had Ion Creangă as a teacher, and continued his secondary education at the Institutele Unite, a private high school for boys in Iași, taking his baccalauréat in 1886. He then studied law at the University of Paris, obtaining a law degree in 1889. But he did not pursue a law career, instead turning to the natural sciences. [1]
His mentor was zoologist and biologist Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers, a professor at the Sorbonne and at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. Racoviță earned a B.S. degree in 1891, and a Ph.D. degree in 1896, for a thesis on Le lobe cephalique et l’encéphale des Annélides Polychète ("The cephalous lobe and the encephalon of polychaetous annelids").
As a student, Racovița was attracted to socialism. He was a founding member of the Second International, as well as a leading member of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Romania. [2] [3]
As a promising young scientist, Racoviță was selected to be part of an international team that started out on a research expedition to Antarctica, aboard the Belgica. The expedition was led by the Belgian officer Adrien de Gerlache, who was also the ship's owner.
On 16 August 1897, under the aegis of the Royal Society of Geography in Brussels, the Belgica, a former Norwegian wooden whaler, left the port of Antwerp, setting sail for the South. It was the ship that gave its name to the whole expedition. The three-mast ship was equipped with a 160 horse-power engine.
The 19 members of the team were of various nationalities. The first mate of the vessel was Roald Amundsen – who was to conquer the South Pole in 1911. Apart from Racoviță, the team was made up of Belgian physicist Émile Danco, Polish geologist and oceanographer Henryk Arctowski with his assistant Antoni Bolesław Dobrowolski and American physician Frederick Cook.
The team left the deck of the ship 22 times, in order to collect scientific data, to conduct investigations and experiments. Racoviță was the first researcher to collect botanical and zoological samples from areas beyond the Antarctic Circle. [5] He found the first flowering plants that were collected in Antarctica, and collected the type specimens of the flightless midge Belgica antarctica , the only insect that can survive year-round in Antarctica. [6] [7]
Belgica made the first daily meteorological recordings and measurements in Antarctica, every hour, for a whole year. The scientists also collected information on oceanic currents and terrestrial magnetism, with as many as 10 volumes of scientific conclusions being published at the end of the expedition, which was considered a success.
The expedition encountered several hardships. Between 10 March 1898 and 14 March 1899, Belgica was caught between ice blocks, making it impossible to sail any further. The crew had to carve a 75-meter-long (250 ft) canal through a six-meter-thick (20 ft) layer of ice, in order to generate a waterway by which to sail to a navigable body of water. Belgica returned to Europe in 1899 without two team-members, who had died during the expedition: Norwegian mariner Carl Wiencke (lost overboard), and Émile Danco {died natural causes}.
Racoviță's diary, published in 1899, makes mention of the difficulties that the team-members had to endure. Photos of the time show that he was hardly recognisable after returning from the expedition. The results of his research were published in 1900, under the title La vie des animaux et des plantes dans l'Antarctique ("The life of animals and plants in Antarctica"). A year after his return, Racoviță was appointed director of the Banyuls-sur-Mer resort and editor of the review Archives de zoologie expérimentale et générale.
Racoviță continued his research, contributing to speleology and exploring over 1,400 caves in France, Spain, Algeria, Italy, and Slovenia. He is considered to be, together with René Jeannel, one of the founders of biospeleology. [8] He was particularly interested in isopoda, of which he discovered many.
In 1919, Racoviță became head of the biology department at the Upper Dacia University in Cluj-Napoca, and served as Rector of the University from 1929 to 1930. He founded the world's first speleological institute there on 26 April 1920, [nb 1] first as a section which was, however, to function independently since 1956, with professor Constantin Motas. In 1920, he became a titular member of the Romanian Academy, [9] and served as President of the Academy from 1926 to 1929. [10]
In the aftermath of the Second Vienna Award of August 1940, the Faculty of Sciences and the Institute of Speleology at the University of Cluj were forced to move out of the city and take refuge in Timișoara. After World War II, Racoviță made great efforts to reorganize the institute. [11] He died in November 1947 in Cluj-Napoca, and was buried in the city's Hajongard Cemetery.
There are two caves named after him. One is the Emil Racoviță Cave , located in Criva, Briceni; with an area of 50 hectares (120 acres), it is the largest cave in Moldova and the third longest cave in Europe. [12] The other one is the Racoviță Cave , located in Iabalcea, Caraș-Severin County. [13]
In 2006, the first Romanian Antarctic exploration station was named the Law-Racoviță Station (known since 2011 as the Law-Racoviță-Negoiță Station).
Poșta Română issued several stamps in his honor: 55 bani and 1.20 lei stamps in 1958, a 55 bani stamp in 1968, a 4 lei stamp in 1985, a 2 lei stamp in 1986, a 4.50 lei stamp in 1997, and a 1.60 lei stamp in 2007. The last one is part of a series of four stamps (Scott 4911–4914) commemorating 100 years since the foundation by Racoviță of the first biospeleology institute in the world.
In 2018, on the 150th anniversary of Racoviță's birth, the National Bank of Romania put into circulation a commemorative silver coin with a face value of 10 lei. [14]
Baron Adrien Victor Joseph de Gerlache de Gomery was a Belgian officer in the Belgian Royal Navy who led the Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897–99.
The Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897–1899 was the first expedition to winter in the Antarctic region. Led by Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery aboard the RV Belgica, it was the first Belgian Antarctic expedition and is considered the first expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Among its members were Frederick Cook and Roald Amundsen, explorers who would later attempt the respective conquests of the North and South Poles.
Gerlache Strait or de Gerlache Strait or Détroit de la Belgica is a channel/strait separating the Palmer Archipelago from the Antarctic Peninsula. The Belgian Antarctic Expedition, under Lt. Adrien de Gerlache, explored the strait in January and February 1898, naming it for the expedition ship Belgica. The name was later changed to honor the commander himself.
Henryk Arctowski Polish Antarctic Station is a Polish research station on King George Island, off the coast of Antarctica.
Bears' Cave is located in the western Apuseni Mountains, on the outskirts of Chișcău village, Bihor County, northwestern Romania. It was discovered in 1975 by Speodava, an amateur spelaeologist group.
The Law-Racoviță-Negoiță Station, known only as the Law-Racoviță Station until 2011, is the first Romanian station for research and exploration in Antarctica, named after the Romanian explorer Emil Racoviță and inaugurated on January 13, 2006 at the location of a station constructed in 1986 by Australia and donated to Romania. The station may be found in Princess Elizabeth Land, in the Larsemann Hills, 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) away from China's Antarctic Zhongshan Station.
Scărișoara Cave, is one of the biggest ice caves in the Apuseni Mountains of Romania, in the western part of the Romanian Carpathians. It is considered a show cave and one of the natural wonders of Romania. It has also been described as a glacier cave.
Iuliu Hațieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, is the oldest medical education institution in Transylvania, a continuation of the Faculty of Medicine which was founded in 1919, as a part of the Superior Dacia University. The university has over 6,000 national and international students, 2,400 resident physicians, as well as over 1,100 teachers and researchers. It was named in honor of the scientist Iuliu Hațieganu. The university is classified as an "advanced research and education university" by the Ministry of Education.
Belgica antarctica, the Antarctic midge, is a species of flightless midge, endemic to the continent of Antarctica. At 2–6 mm (0.08–0.2 in) long, it is the largest purely terrestrial animal native to the continent. It also has the smallest known insect genome as of 2014, with only 99 million base pairs of nucleotides and about 13500 genes. It is the only insect that can survive year-round in Antarctica.
Teodor Gheorghe Negoiță was a polar region explorer. In 1995 he became the first known Romanian explorer to reach the North Pole.
Antoni Bolesław Dobrowolski was a Polish geophysicist, meteorologist and explorer.
Belgica was a barque-rigged steamship that was built in 1884 by Christian Brinch Jørgensen at Svelvik, Norway as the whaler Patria. In 1896, she was purchased by Adrien de Gerlache for conversion to a research ship, taking part in the Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897–1901, becoming the first ship to overwinter in the Antarctic. In 1902, she was sold to Philippe, Duke of Orléans and used on expeditions to the Arctic in 1905 and from 1907 to 1909.
The Ethnographic Museum of Transylvania is situated in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. With a history of almost 100 years, the Ethnographic Museum of Transylvania is one of the first and greatest of its kind in Romania. It has two exhibition sections, one of which is to be found in downtown Reduta Palace, while the other exhibition section is the open-air Romulus Vuia Park situated on the city's north-west side, in Hoia Forest.
Georges Lecointe was a Belgian naval officer and scientist. He was captain of the Belgica and second-in-command of the Belgian Antarctic Expedition, the first to overwinter in Antarctica. After his return to Belgium he was the founder of the International Polar Organization and deeply involved in the foundation of the International Research Council and the International Astronomical Union.
Marcian David (Matty) Bleahu was a Romanian geologist, speleologist, geographer, alpinist, explorer, writer and politician. He is well known for his scientific contributions to the development of the theories of global tectonics, for his pioneering in speleology and for the development of this science, but also for the popularization of science and of ecology in Romania.
Biospeleology, also known as cave biology, is a branch of biology dedicated to the study of organisms that live in caves and are collectively referred to as troglofauna.
Hajongard cemetery, on Avram Iancu Street, is one of the oldest cemeteries in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, founded in the sixteenth century. It is one of the most picturesque sights of the city. It covers an area of approximately 14 hectares.
Cuciulat Cave is located on the Podișul Someșan plateau, near the village Cuciulat in the commune Letca, Sălaj County, Romania. It contains the oldest known cave paintings in Central Europe.
Florica Topârceanu is an Antarctic researcher, best known for her work was on Antarctic aquatic viruses and the development of the Antarctic scientific community in Romania. She was the first Romanian woman biologist to study life in Antarctica and the first Romanian woman expert to the Antarctic Treaty.