Mário Guimarães Ferri


Mario Guimarães Ferri was a Professor at the Universidade de São Paulo. He was a research scientist, a lecturer, an editor, an administrator and also an artist. In his scientific work, he was a pioneer ecologist in Brazil. His power of communication linked to a great love of botany and the environment and a deep scientific knowledge made of him an exceptional lecturer. In his books and articles on science he informed the public about ecology and pollution – and in a very simple but precise language he presented the necessary data to understand the importance of the protection of the environment.

Biography

Mario Guimarães Ferri was married to Ruth Lippi Ferri since 1941. He made his primary studies in São José dos Campos and his secondary studies were in the city of São Paulo at the Instituto de Educação Caetano de Campos. In 1935 he became a teacher for primary and secondary schools. He became a science graduate at the Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras da Universidade de São Paulo. He was the first collaborator to Professor Felix Rawitscher, who had organized the Department of Botany in the FFCLUSP. He obtained his PhD at USP in 1944 and a Livre-Docencia in 1951. In 1955 he got the position of Full Professor of Botany at the Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras. He undertook scientific research in Botany and in Ecology. In Botany, he did pioneer work in Brazil with phytohormones, mainly auxins, and succeeded in raising interest in this subject.
All his articles published between 1945 and 1951 deal with phytohormones. His interest in the area was a consequence of his studies in plant physiology in the USA – where with the aid of a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, he was able to work at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, at Columbia University, and at the California Institute of Technology. In the area of Tropical Ecology he was responsible for the formation of several students. He was one of the founder members of the Academia de Ciências do Estado de São Paulo, the only one from the area of Botany. He was also very active in directing the USP Publishing House where he courageously promoted at that time the publication of scientific books in Portuguese by Brazilian scientists. He was the supervisor of twenty PhD students. Ferri is also known as an artist of finearts – and he started producing his drawings in 1961.

Work positions

He was a Lecturer, a Full Professor and Head of the Department of Botany of the Instituto of Biociencias, USP. From 1961 to 1968 he was the Director of the Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras and for five years he was Vice-Principal of USP, then Principal in 1967 and 1968. From 1961 to 1968 he was a Member of the Advisory Board of USP. For a number of years, starting in 1964, he was the President of the Editorial Board of USP and during his period 1806 books were published in collaboration with several publishing houses, in several fields of knowledge. He was also a referee for several scientific journals in Brazil and outside Brazil.

Prizes

Ferri took part in group and individual exhibitions, in several Brazilian States:
He pioneered field work in Plant Ecology in Brazil. His PhD thesis was one of the first scientific works of an experimental nature in the study of ecology of the vegetation of the cerrados. The first work in experimental field ecology in Brazil is a collaboration he undertook with Felix Rawitscher and Mercedes Rachid – Profundidade dos solos e vegetação dos cerrados do Brasil Meridional.;

Publications