Editorial

The Rodriguésia is the journal of the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden Research Institute (JBRJ) since 1935, year of its creation, being named after one of the most influential botanists in Brazil, João Barbosa Rodrigues. It publishes scientific results, institutional activities and aspects of the life and work of scientists who are important to the field of botany.

Taking this into account, in 1942, the journal dedicated a volume to the memory of the 100 years of the birth of João Barbosa Rodrigues. In this volume it can be found articles by Alpheu Domingues, Wanderbilt Duarte, Othon Machado, all referencing the importance of the botanist.

João Barbosa Rodrigues was a scholar of several subjects, director in several institutions, and participated in a varied network of sociability. It is noticeable the plurality of interests that João Barbosa Rodrigues demonstrated in works and actions from the second half of the 19^th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Such plurality of interests manifested by Rodrigues challenged us to propose a dossier concerning different perspectives on the work and life of the botanist.

The proposal to bring to the public the botanist João Barbosa Rodrigues, 180 years after his birth, is an excellent pretext to get important themes to the country in this historical moment in which the place of science in people’s daily life is being discussed by the society and research institutions, among others.

The articles published in the present dossier allow the reader to have contact with different dimensions of the botanist’s work, ranging from different themes, methodologies and differentiated approaches. And more than that, it invites the readers to a reflection on what Barbosa Rodrigues wrote and how the historiography updates and reinforces certain explanations about his performance.

Some of the papers presented here argue the exceptional dimension of the botanist and others seek to distance themselves from the histories of achievements and laudatory biographies still present in our literature in the wake of the Social Studies of Science (Costa et al. 2023; Domingues 2023; Gesteira & Antunes 2023; Gonzalez 2023; Heizer & Silva 2023; Lopes 2023; Sá 2023; Sanjad & Ximenes 2023).

With that in mind, we consider that such records allow us to infer about the life of the botanist, his performance in the field and in the office, which are important for a historiography that is renewed on institutional history, history of botany and environmental history.

In 2022, the launching of a dossier from this perspective allows us to reflect on national science, from a democratic and sovereign perspective. The diversity of themes covered here, as well as the work of João Barbosa Rodrigues regarding the knowledge of the Brazilian flora, are not exhausted in this dossier. They serve, however, as a starting point for the understanding of a botanist who lived between the Empire and the Republic.

References

• Costa DLL, Curty MFNS & Barberena FFVA (2023) João Barbosa Rodrigues: a compilation of his remarkable trajectory as a scientist and main contributions to orchidology. Rodriguésia 73: e00222022. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2175-7860202273098
  » http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2175-7860202273098
• Domingues HMB (2023) João Barbosa Rodrigues and “Queen Rubber”: An innovative scientific culture. Rodriguésia 73: e00242022. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2175-7860202273096
  » http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2175-7860202273096
• Gesteira HM & Antunes AP (2023) Barbosa Rodrigues in his cabinet: image, history, and science. Rodriguésia 73: e00212022. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2175-7860202273097
  » http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2175-7860202273097
• Gonzalez M (2023) Allegory of the palma mater: an invented tradition. Rodriguésia 73: e00142022. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2175-7860202273094
  » http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2175-7860202273094
• Heizer A & Silva F (2023) João Barbosa Rodrigues and “The Decrease of Water in Brazil”. Rodriguésia 73: e00192022. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2175-7860202273100
  » http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2175-7860202273100
• Lopes MM (2023) The circulation of collections: Barbosa Rodrigues’ Amazon Botanical Museum. Rodriguésia 73: e00182022. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2175-7860202273095
  » http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2175-7860202273095
• Sá MR (2023) The construction of a scientific biography: João Barbosa Rodrigues, a 19th-century naturalist. Rodriguésia 73: e00362022. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2175-7860202273101
  » http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2175-7860202273101
• Sanjad N & Ximenes C (2023) Intertextuality and knowledge translation in travel reports: the Capim River and its inhabitants in the narratives of Alfred Russel Wallace (1849), João Barbosa Rodrigues (1874-1875) and Emil Goeldi (1897). Rodriguésia 73: e00512022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1590/2175-7860202273099
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/2175-7860202273099

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  06 Mar 2023
• Date of issue
  2022