Erik Leonard Ekman

Erik Leonard Ekman (Stockholm 1883-Santiago de los Caballeros 1931) was a Swedish botanist and explorer .

Biography

Erik Leonard Ekman was born into a low-income household with 5 children on October 14, 1883. Due to economic difficulties, the family moved to the central-Swedish town of Jönköping when he was eleven. Here, while at school, his passion for botanical collecting started. He obtained his bachelor's degree in 1907 at Lund University in southern Sweden and was offered free passage on a ship to Argentina with a Swedish shipping company. He spent 3 months in Misiones collecting plants, aided greatly by the local Swedish colony. While there, he was offered a position as the Regnellian amanuensis at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, which he gladly accepted. He started his service at the museum in 1908. Thanks to financial support from the Regnell fund, he was able to travel widely through Europe and study with many of the prominent botanists of the time.

Ekman presented his doctoral dissertation at Lund in 1914. In the same year, he was to participate in the third Regnellian expedition to South America. His goal was Brazil, but Ekman was given an assignment from professors Ignatius Urban (from Berlin) and C. Lindman (from Stockholm) to make short stops on Cuba (1 month) and Hispaniola (8 months), to collect specimens for Urban's "Symbolae Antillanae" botanical project. Ekman agreed to do so under protest. His trip to Brazil was further delayed for two years by the onset of World War I, political unrest in Haiti, and a plague epidemic in Cuba.

Ekman landed in Havana in 1917 and remained in Cuba for 10 years, except for a short visit to Haiti during 1917. After serious disagreements with (and pressure from) the Swedish Royal Academy of Science in Stockholm, Ekman returned to Haiti in 1924 where he had a period of intensive field work lasting until 1928, when he went to the Dominican Republic for further studies.

By the end of 1930 Ekman was decided to finally fulfil his original mission: Brazil. However, this trip never occurred, since Ekman died suddenly at the age of 47 on January 15, 1931, in Santiago de los Caballeros in the Dominican Republic. He died from influenza after having been battered and weakened by pneumonia, bouts of malaria and black water fever. He never returned to Sweden after leaving it for the second time.

Ekman was buried in Santiago de los Caballeros where a statue and a plaque were erected in his honor. There also are streets in both Santiago and Santo Domingo bearing his name. In Cuba a special department in the Botanical Garden named after Ekman, contains plant species related to his work.

Legacy

Ekman contributed to the knowledge of the Caribbean flora more than any other previous scientist. He described more than 2,000 species new to science (a great many of which are named after him), remarkably so, since by then the flora of the Caribbean was considered to be pretty well documented. His collections are still very actively used in the research on the West-Indian flora. He collected around 36,000 numbers, amounting with duplicates to more than 150,000 specimens. Ekman also made some geographical discoveries, he mapped several mountains of Haiti and was among the first to measure accurately the highest Caribbean mountain , Pico Duarte. Ekman also collected birds, mammals and reptiles, of which several species bear his name, e.g. the Hispaniolan nightjar ("Caprimulgus ekmani").

The Swedish Foundation "Instituto Ekman" was established in 1991 in his honour. The aims of the Foundation are to intensify the scientifical and cultural exchange between Sweden and the Caribbean countries.

An in depth biographical work on Ekman by Thomas A. Zanoni (NY) and Roger Lundin (S))is ongoing.

References

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* cite web|title=Naturhistoriska riksmuseet|url=http://www2.nrm.se/fbo/hist/ekman/ekman.html.se
accessdate=2007-02-08