2023-05-13 17:00:00
He was an engineer, a doctor in Natural Sciences and an official in the governments of Yrigoyen and Alvear. He learned to read and to be interested in science from Jules Verne’s novels.
At the age of six, he memorized Girard’s “The Metamorphoses of Insects” and Huber’s “History of Ants.”
When I returned from school, I would observe the ants at the end of Florida street, where I would place a rug and spread it out to see them more closely.
From these observations, he verified that, in certain nests, there were, in addition to the workers, other big-headed forms, of which there was nothing in the books.
Based on that discovery, he set out to study them one day and write a book that would reveal these novelties.
He studied at the National College of Buenos Aires and at the University of Buenos Aires, in the Faculty of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences.
At that time he joined the Civic Union and married Doña Dalmira Cantilo Ortiz Basualdo, with whom he had five children: Angel León, Beatriz, Guillermo, María Teresa and Luis Francisco.
Gallardo graduated in Civil Engineering in 1894.
After graduating as a civil engineer, he decided to continue training but in the field of his real interest: biology.
He traveled to France, the land of his favorite writer, and took courses with different scientists.
In 1899 he presided over the Argentine Scientific Society, and already demonstrating his concern to affirm the links between Latin American countries, he convoked the First Scientific Congress with representatives from the continent.
In 1900 he represented the University of Buenos Aires at the International Congresses of Botany and Geology.
He had two stages of his career as a scientist: first he devoted himself to theoretical biology and then to entomology.
His doctoral thesis, presented in 1906, was entitled “Dynamic interpretation of cell division”, for which he received a gold medal from the Faculty of Natural and Exact Sciences, rewarding his thematic originality.
His main investigations were: Electromagnetic hypothesis about the movement of chromosomes in karyokinesis and “Las Hormigas de la República Argentina”, an investigation that remained incomplete.
In 1911 Gallardo was appointed by Sáenz Peña as director of the Bernardino Rivadavia Museum of Natural Sciences, replacing the late paleontologist Florentino Ameghino.
He accepted the position without being very convinced and on the condition of changing the building to house the valuable pieces of the Museum, whose headquarters passed through the Convent of Santo Domingo in the Manzana de las Luces and buildings in the Plazoleta Montserrat.
In 1914 he presented his resignation due to the bureaucratic obstacles of the position, but the mass was rejected.
Since 1937, the Museum’s headquarters have been located in Parque Centenario and contain all the collections that Gallardo wanted for his exhibition: Mineralogy, Entomology, Malacology, Botany and Archaeology, among many others.
For Gallardo, an assiduous reader of Luis Pasteur, “science and religion correspond to two different planes between which there should be no interference.”
Meanwhile, his brother became a priest and founded the Argentine Church in Rome.
In his role as President of the National Education Council, a period that spanned from 1916 to 1921, he doubled the number of schools in the country.
In the city of Rosario is the Provincial Museum of Natural Sciences Dr. Ángel Gallardo, characterized by its proposal for a sustainable museum and critical museology
Remembered as the discoverer of the caryokinetic cell division and specialist in the life of ants, Doctor Angel Gallardo passed away at the age of 86.
On May 13, 1934, Dr. Ángel Gallardo, a naturalist and entomologist, died. The story is also news on Radio Perfil.
Script by Cecilia Claps and locution by Pita Fortín.
by Radio Profile
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