Hi All,
Caetano Xavier dos Remedios Furtado happens to be my mum's first
cousin (maternal side) .
I am still in contact with his son, Carlos Furtado, who lives with
his family in Singapore.
Joseph de Souza
On 07-12-2013 18:22, Valmiki Faleiro wrote:
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.
.
