Émil Goeldi

Emil August Goeldi ( born August 28, 1859 in Ennetbühl, St. Gallen, † July 5, 1917 in Zurich ) is a Swiss naturalist and mainly in Brazil worked. There he is known under the name Emilio Goeldi.

Goeldi was a student of Ernst Haeckel in 1880 and came from Switzerland to Brazil. He worked a short time at the Museu Nacional, before the museum was established in 1866 for natural history and ethnography of the state of Pará in Belém thoroughly reorganized at the invitation of the Governor. The institution bears his name: Museu Emilio Goeldi Paraense.

Goeldi is known for his studies of Brazilian birds and mammals. He returned to Switzerland in 1905.

Goeldi has collected for museums than 13,000 animals that have been preserved in a variety of ways. Among them are numerous new taxa, species which he discovered new. The biggest, still preserved part of the collection is on display at the Natural History Museum of the civic community of Bern (Switzerland).