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Margarita Bravo Hollis
Margarita Bravo Hollis (10 June 1911 – 13 December 2011) was a Mexican parasitologist. A 1955 Guggenheim Fellow and expert in helminthology, she worked at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) as a researcher and educator, and she managed UNAM's helminthological research as curator of the Helminthological Collection of the Institute of Biology and co-developer of the Helminthology Laboratory. BiographyMargarita Bravo Hollis was born on 10 June 1911 in Mixcoac, then part of the Mexican Federal District separate from Mexico City.[1] Her sister was botanist Helia Bravo Hollis.[2] She joined the National Autonomous University of Mexico's Institute of Biology in the 1930s,[a] where she began a career as a research assistant and later became a senior researcher.[3] She was then promoted to professor in 1947, before getting her master degree in science from UNAM in 1949.[1] In 1955, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship[4] for "studies of the trematode parasites of fishes";[1] during then, she worked under Harold W. Manter at the University of Nebraska.[3] Returning to UNAM, she served as curator of the Institute of Biology's Helminthological Collection from 1960 to 1980, publishing a catalogue for them in 1973.[3] She was awarded the UNAM's 1981 Medal of University Merit for her five decades of work.[3] She also taught invertebrate zoology and laboratory techniques at the UNAM Faculty of Science.[3] Having published at least once every year for almost six decades,[5] she eventually retired in 1992.[3] As an academic, she specialized in monogeneans, in addition to her work on other parasitic worm species.[3] Her research resulted in 96 publications, as well as the naming of one family and 105 new species of parasitic worms, one of which - Pseudobivagina aniversaria - was named after the Institute of Biology's 50th annivesary in 1979.[3][5] In 1970, she was honored with a special volume of the Annals of the Institute of Biology of the Zoology series.[3] She also had five genera and 27 species named after her.[3] She and her teacher Eduardo Caballero y Caballero turned UNAM's Helminthology Laboratory into "one of the most recognized research centers of this discipline in Latin America".[3] Marcos Rafael Lamothe-Argumedo, whom she once worked with in her capacity as a academic advisor, called her "one of the pillars of helminthology in Mexico".[3] She died on 13 December 2011 in Mexico City; she was 100.[3] NotesReferences
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