Does anyone know where in Goa botanist CX Furtado hailed from?
CX FURTADO (1897-1980): CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE STUDY OF PALMS By Dennis V. Johnson, Cincinnati, OH, USA and Eng Pin Tay, Canning Vale, WA, Australia, published in Gardens' Bulletin Singapore 51 (1999), pgs. 141-150 (extracts): Caetano Xavier dos Remedios Furtado did pioneering taxonomic work on Malayan palms and the African genus Hyphaene. He was born in Goa on 14 October 1897. He attended the Poona Agricultural College and while an undergraduate began to write technical articles, especially on the coconut palm. His first article was published in 1919. After completing B.Sc. in 1921, he worked as agronomist in Burma where he continued his interest in coconuts. He joined the Singapore Botanic Gardens in 1923 and within a few years began a lengthy study of Malayan palms. Primarily on the basis of his publications on palm research in the 1930s, Furtado was awarded a D.Sc. degree from the University of Bombay in 1939. Dr. Furtado retired in 1952 but was re-employed as Botanist until 1964. Even after his second retirement, he continued to conduct research and to publish botanical articles for nearly another decade, his last publication appearing in 1970. Because his professional achievements in life and at his death were overshadowed by the works of more eminent scientists, Furtado has not been given the recognition he deserves as a botanist and palm specialist. At the time of his death on 13 June 1980, Furtado's research and writing on palms went almost unacknowledged because so much attention was drawn to the death, four months earlier, of the preeminent world palm expert H.E. Moore, Jr. === Furtado and his young family were in Singapore when the Japanese invasion was imminent. As a precaution, he sent his family to Goa where they lived with relatives until the WWII ended. The family just made it out on the last commercial ship. During the war, he was confined with two other prominent British botanists in the Singapore Botanic Garden. Furtado was in charge of the grounds and was put into the very difficult position, under Japanese orders, of selecting a number of the Garden's workers to be sent the build the Burma railroad, which was all but a death sentence. Furtado died in Singapore on 13 June 1980. His son Jose Remedios, studied zoology in Australia and at the University of Malaya, where he stayed on to become a professor of zoology. In the early 1990s Jose worked at the World Bank in Washington DC. Last heard, he was retired and living in London.
