Cuban botanist and tobacconist Juan Tomás Roig y Mesa was a particularly prolific collector and researcher in the field of Cuban medicinal plants. Growing up in Santiago de las Vegas he experienced considerable hardship after the death of his father, when he was just four years old. Working to help support his mother and three younger siblings, Roig was unable to concentrate on his early education and at the age of ten he became apprentice to a tobacconist. After three years in the small factory 'Crema de Cuba' he was qualified and enjoyed this vocation in Santiago de las Vegas for a further three years.
In 1894 he moved with his family to the U.S.A. and settled in Cayo Hueso, continuing to work as a tobacconist here and in Tampa. Joining with many other expatriated Cubans he did all he could for the revolutionary cause and acted as vice-president of the Emigrados Revolucionarios Cubanos. After the revolution he returned to Cuba and, having apparently never made a particularly good tobacconist, started out on the path to becoming a teacher. Joining a national scheme to train primary school teachers he received his qualification in 1901 and began to practice right away.
The following year Roig took part in a course at Harvard University where he learnt how to teach English, returning to teach English and primary studies in Havana until 1909. While here he studied the natural sciences at Havana University and, helped by a number of grants from different institutions, graduated as a doctor of pharmacy in 1910, and an agronomic technician and doctor of natural sciences in 1912. His thesis was entitled "Las cactáceas de la flora Cubana" and during this time Roig had begun to publish botanical works in the journal El Estímulo.
From 1913 he worked at the Agronomic Experimental Station in Santiago de las Vegas, first as head of the Department of Botany and, after a break between 1917 and 1934 when he worked as a natural history lecturer at the Pinar del Río Institute of Secondary Education, he returned to the position of head of the Research Section and the Department of Chemistry. Here he collected, studied and classified plants, particularly woody species and those with medicinal uses, with the aim of developing the cultivation of medicinal plants and expanding the pharmaceutical industry in his country. In 1914 he was co-author of Dr. M. Gómez de la Maza's Flora de Cuba and his other most important publications included a botanical dictionary of common Cuban plant names (1928), Plantas medicinales, aromáticas o venenosas de Cuba (1945) as well as works on manzanilla (camomile) and cultivated aroids.
In total he amassed a collection of some 9,000 specimens and numerous plant species were named by him or for him, such as Banaria Roigii P.Wilson and Peperomia roigana Trillease. He also has a genus Roigia named after him by the eminent American botanist Nathaniel Britton, and received an honorary degree in agronomic engineering from the University of Havana in 1962. In later life he once again took on the role of revolutionary and in 1967 joined the Communist Party of Cuba.
Sources:
R. Garca Blanco et al., 2002, Roig Mesa, Juan Tomás. En: Cien figuras de la Ciencia en Cuba:
http://resultados.redciencia.cu/cientificos/biog/jroig.pdf
J. Acuña, 1974, "Datos biográficos del Dr. Juan Tomás Roig y Mesa", Revista de la Sociedad Cubana de Botánica, 4(1): 4-8.
