Charles Frederick Hartt, um naturalista no imperio de Pedro II (Brazil, Portuguese text)

This dissertation describes and analyzes the role played by the American naturalist Charles Frederick Hartt within the Brazilian cultural and scientific environment between 1865 and 1878. A trained geologist, Charles Hartt first went to Brazil in 1865, as part of the Thayer Expedition headed by Louis Agassiz, founder and director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. During the fifteen months of this expedition, Hartt completed his formation as a naturalist, and also prepared himself to devote his career to the study of nature in Brazil.; After returning to Brazil in 1867, though for only three months, Hartt wrote Geology and Physical Geography of Brazil, his most important work on the subject. By 1870, when it appeared, the author had already been appointed Professor of Geology at Cornell University. Hartt returned to Brazil in 1870 and in 1871 both times in charge of the Morgan Expeditions, on which were collected a great deal of information regarding not only geology, but paleontology and anthropology as well. In 1874 Hartt started out on his most ambitious trip to Brazil thus far. It would be his last. He was appointed director of the Brazilian Geological Survey, sponsored by the imperial government of Peter II. Before finishing the survey's task, however, Hartt was stricken with yellow fever and died in March 1878.; Aside from his work as a geologist, Hartt produced an impressive number of papers and books in other fields related to Brazil. He collected and analyzed Indian myths; studied Indian pottery; prepared anthropological studies of Indian tribes; wrote travel accounts; and even painted a set of large canvases displaying animals, insects, plants and landscapes from the Brazilian natural environment.; Hartt was an important actor in the institutionalization of the natural sciences in Brazil. The Brazilian cultural and scientific environment during the third quarter of the nineteenth century cannot be fully understood without taking into account Hartt's singular contributions to the intellectual life of the Empire at that time.