Ladislau de Souza Mello Netto

Ladislau de Souza Mello Netto (18xx-18xx) was a Brazilian botanist and director of the Brazilian National Museum in Rio de Janeiro.

Ladislau Netto was appointed museum director in 1870, as a substitute, and 1876, as full director, by the Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II, who strove to make the museum a showcase of science and learning. Thusly, Ladislau Netto became the most influential Brazilian scientist of his times, with a mandate for modernizing and expanding the museum and making contacts with foreign scientists.

Although he was a French-trained botanist, he was drawn to anthropology, especially physical anthropology and the question of the origin of the Brazilian Indians.

In 1874 Ladislau Netto was taken in by a fake Phoenician inscription from Brazil's vast interior state of Minas Gerais. When specialistas debunked the supposed record of these prehistoric navigator far from the Mediterrians, Netto blamed foreigners for the fabrication of the hoax.

In 1876, he founded the museum's scientific the journal, the "Archivos do Museu Nacional", that is still published. He hired several foreign scientists as traveling naturalists, including Fritz Müller, Emílio Goeldi, Domingos Soares Ferreira Penna, Hermann von Ihering, Wilhelm Schwacke, Orville Adalbert Derby, and others. These he had to fire in 1890, as a result of the proclamation of Brazilian independence and the exile of the emperor. Netto retired in 1893.

Ladislau Netto is remembered for his use of science to back racism and elitism, and for his attempts to maintain and concentrate his power in a system where political connections were everything and science was just for show.