Venezuelan botanist. Getulio Agostini was born in Cantaura, Anzoátegui state, and from 1959 worked for the Institute of Botany at the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, first as a researcher and later as chief of the herbarium. He attended the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) and graduated as a biologist in 1966. Two years later he moved to New York to undertake various postgraduate courses at Columbia University before undertaking a PhD at the City University of New York (CUNY) which he received in 1971. During this time he was a graduate fellow of the New York Botanic Garden and in both of these institutions he studied the taxa Cybianthus (Myrsinaceae). Between 1972 and 1990 Agostini worked at the School of Biology in UCV as a research professor and became a specialist in Venezuelan Boraginaceae and Myrsinaceae. In 1975 he stopped working for the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock and became chief of the Botany Department at the UCV; later he would be named director of its School of Biology (1981-1982).

Agostini has been a member of Venezuelan and American scientific associations and is responsible for founding both the Venezuelan Society of Botany and the Association for Tropical Biology. Between 1973 and 1975 he was the editorial chief for Acta Botánica Venezuelica and has personally published some 50 journal articles and two books covering the taxonomy of a diverse range of Venezuelan phanerogamic families, including many monographs for local floras. The most important projects that Agostini undertook included taxonomic revisions of the subfamily Papilionoideae, the family Boraginaceae and the genus Brownea.

Sources:
Personal communication with family
Agostini, G. and Blanco, C., 1974, "Colección De Muestras Botánicas", Acta Botánica Venezuelica 9: 133-193.