Trying to not just post stuff related to ML, today I am going to discuss a different topic: remarkable Brazilians. Why? Well, because Brazil is a country well known by its beaches, its soccer, its volleyball, and its women, but just this. In fact, most people just heard about the two largest cities in the country, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo (none of them is Brazil's capital!). This post goes on the opposite direction. I am not going to list athletes, or brazilian top models, but remarkable Brazilians in other sense, most of them related to science or arts.
Before someone starts to complain, this is not a ranking. I listed them according to the date of birth. As you will notice, I decided to not list currently alive people, it is a safe approach to ensure that nothing that I wrote will change. Most of the information presented here is from Wikipedia.
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Dom Pedro II (7 April 1831 – 15 November 1889): This man was the last Brazilian Emperor (the monarchy ended while he was alive). Despite being bounded to the monarchy, he was a man far ahead of his time. Leandro Narloch, in his book Guia Politicamente Incorreto da Historia do Brasil, says that Dom Pedro II once stated that his dream was to be the first president of Brazil, abolishing the monarchy. He didn't abolished it fearing a military coup (what happened and expelled him from Brazil), besides also trying to preserve the Brazilian territory (all the other countries that became a democracy too soon in South America are much smaller). In fact, his monarchy regimen was much "lighter" than others, he was against censoring in the press, accepting critics that would be considered betrayal in other countries. Another of his modern political views is related to religion. Narloch says that he was not worried with different religions in Brazil, believing that everybody should be free to have their own religion. While he was in the throne, during an absence, his daughter Princess Isabel abolished slavery in Brazil. Narloch also says that, when expelled, Dom Pedro II filled a pillow with Brazilian ground/land (?), so he could always be close to his country.
To finish this brief description of the last Brazilian emperor, I quote a paragraph in Wikipedia (I removed the references): Pedro II's erudition amazed Friedrich Nietzsche when both met. Victor Hugo told the Emperor: "Sire, you are a great citizen, you are the grandson of Marcus Aurelius", and Alexandre Herculano called him: "A Prince whom the general opinion holds as the foremost of his era because of his gifted mind, and due to the constant application of that gift to the sciences and culture."He became a member of the Royal Society, the Russian Academy of Sciences, The Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium and the American Geographical Society. In 1875, he was elected to the French Academy of Sciences, an honor previously granted to only two other heads of state: Peter the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte. Pedro II exchanged letters with scientists, philosophers, musicians and other intellectuals. Many of his correspondents became his friends, including Richard Wagner, Louis Pasteur, Louis Agassiz, John Greenleaf Whittier, Michel Eugène Chevreul, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Arthur de Gobineau, Frédéric Mistral, Alessandro Manzoni, Alexandre Herculano, Camilo Castelo Branco and James Cooley Fletcher.
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Machado de Assis (21 June 1839 - 29 September 1908): Just to start, he is widely regarded as the greatest Brazilian writer. He wrote in all genres (poetry, short stories and novel), but he is best known for some of his short stories and, mainly, by his novels. Probably, the three most famous novels he wrote are: (1) Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, also known in English as Epitaph for a Small Winner), (2) Quincas Borba (also known in English as Philosopher or Dog?) and (3) Dom Casmurro (Sir Dour). His work have been studied by critics all around the world and definitely is an author that deserves to be read. He is also the founder of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. A last information, extracted from Wikipedia: Machado de Assis was included on American literary critic Harold Bloom's list of the greatest 100 geniuses of literature, alongside writers such as Dante, Shakespeare and Cervantes.
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Oswaldo Cruz (5 August 1872 - 11 February 1917) To ease my job on this long post, I quote this link: "Dr Cruz is widely praised for his pioneering work on identifying and controlling yellow fever, bubonic plague, malaria and smallpox. Of particular importance is his use of vaccines and instituting the modern medical practices of notification, quarantine of cases, eradication of pests carrying the disease and improvement to public hygeine. Although these were not always popular public policies they were central in the eradication of epidemics of these illnesses. Dr Cruz consequently became a national hero." Additionally, in 1916 he also assisted the creation of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.
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Santos Dumont (20 July 1873 - 23 July 1932) was an aviation pioneer. There is much discussion (at least in Brazil) about who first created an airplane, if Santos Dumont did it, or if the Wright brothers did it. I don't think it really matters for this post. The discussion already shows how important Santos-Dumont was. Most of his career was focused on dirigibles, but his most famous achievement was made with 14-bis, the first heavier-than-air flight to be certified by the Aéro Club de France and the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).
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Carlos Chagas (9 July 1879 - 8 November 1934): He was another sanitary physician, scientistic, as well as Oswaldo Cruz. He discovered Chagas disease while working at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute (yes! the same one that I cited above). This is not my field, so I am just going to quote Wikipedia again: "Chagas’ work is unique in the history of medicine, because he was the only researcher so far to describe completely a new infectious disease: its pathogen, vector (Triatominae), host, clinical manifestations and epidemiology. Chagas was also the first to discover and illustrate the parasitic fungal genus Pneumocystis, later infamously to be linked to PCP (Pneumocystis pneumonia in AIDS victims)."
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Gilberto Freyre (15 March 1900 - 18 July 1987) He is considered one of the most important sociologists of the 20th century and he was one of the unique brazilians to receive the title of Sir from the British Crown. Additionally, it is interesting to observe that people in television still mention him, something not so common for sociologists...
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Cândido Portinari (29 December 1903 - 6 February 1962) Portinari is one of the most famous painters in Brazil. Interestingly, he had a great impact outside Brazil, as his painting Guerra e Paz (War and Peace) in the United Nations building in New York and four murals in the Hispanic Reading Room of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. There is an interesting story about War and Peace, but I will not tell it today. This post is way too long.
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Oscar Niemeyer (15 December 1907 - 5 December 2012) By far, the greatest architect Brazil has ever had. He designed Brazil's capital, Brasília, the Pampulha Architectural Group, in the city I lived before moving to Canada, Belo Horizonte, and so on... He had important designs outside Brazil too, as the United Nations Headquarters, in New York (he was one of the architects in the project). According to Wikipedia, this last building engendered invitations to teach at Yale University and the Harvard Graduate School of Design (!). If you did not clicked on the links in each person's name, please do for Niemeyer. There are lots of pictures of its main buildings...
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Guimarães Rosa (27 June 1908 - 19 November 1967) Machado de Assis, as I already told, is considered the greatest Brazilian writer. However, if it is not unanimous, is because of Guimarães Rosa. He was a fantastic writer. In my opinion, Machado de Assis was more consistent, delivering much more novels. Nonetheless, the best Brazilian book I have ever read is The Devil to Pay in the Backlands (Grande Sertão: Veredas). I would say that it is the Brazilian equivalent of Ulysses, from James Joyce. Almost any Brazilian has already heard about this writer, despite almost no Brazilian already read him. What is justifiable, as most of the britannians never read James Joyce.
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Chico Xavier (2 April 1910 - 30 June 2002) This is the most controversial name in this list. At least I believe so, for a simple reason: Chico Xavier is related to religion. However, I'll leave this topic aside. He was a "medium", but most important, a philanthropist. In 1981 and 1982, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Of course, as a Brazilian, he did not win (more about this topic below). Currently his biography became a Brazilian movie, as well as some of his books. However, I'd like to highlight his philanthropism, this is why he is in this list. By the way, he was not nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples". Sorry for that...
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César Lattes (11 July 1924 - 8 March 2005) This last person was one of the most important physicist Brazil ever had. To be short, coping Wikipedia text: "Although he was the main researcher and the first author of the historical Nature article describing the pion, Cecil Powell alone was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1950 for "his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method". The reason for this apparent neglect is that the Nobel Committee policy until 1960 was to give the award to the research group head, only. Niels Bohr is rumored to have left behind a letter titled "Why Cesar Lattes did not win the Nobel Prize - Open 50 years after my death", however inquiries at the Niels Bohr Archive in Copenhagen, Denmark has turned up no such document." I believe it is enough. And sounds very impressive for me.
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Well, this is just an extremely short list of remarkable brazilians, at least in my opinion. I excluded several extremely important writers such as Carlos Drummond de Andrade (my favorite poet), Cecilia Meirelles, Manuel Bandeira, among others... as well as great painters as Tarsila do Amaral and Di Cavalcanti. As I initially told, I deliberately avoided to list important athletes as Pelé (the greatest soccer player ever, athlete of the century, and so on...) and Ayrton Senna (arguably the greatest racing driver ever).
I hope this post was useful to show that Brazil do have remarkable people who made a great difference in the world. Brazilians are not good promoting themselves, we do not have an international motion picture industry, to make movies about these people, and so on. This was my attempt to contribute with a list of important Brazilians. Unfortunately, most brazilians still do not know some of the listed people... Maybe I forgot someone that I shouldn't! If I did that, I'm sorry....
Disclaimer: If this post took too long to be posted, or if it is not so well written, it is certainly due to the incredible high amount of work I'm doing right now.
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