Biography

Argentine botanist. Arturo Burkart was an expert in legume taxonomy and the general flora of Argentina and held numerous important positions in Argentine botanical institutions. Born in Buenos Aires to German parents he entered the School of Agriculture at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) in 1925 and was taught by L.R. Parodi. He graduated as an agricultural engineer in 1928 having published his first work on a new Xanthium form for Argentina (1926). From this time onwards, however, Burkart orientated himself towards the legumes, publishing on this family the year he graduated and going on to become a world authority. Also in this period he met Ángel L. Cabrera and along with other young botanists they undertook several collecting trips and spent much time exchanging plants and ideas.

In 1929 he received a grant from UBA to study in Germany at the Plant Institute of Münchberg and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Biology in Berlin; here he prepared his thesis on Drosophila and conducted further research into the taxonomy of Leguminosae and the Compositae genus Chaptalia. Between 1930 and 1936 Burkart worked as an assistant plant geneticist under Parodi at the Agronomic and Veterinarian Faculty before teaching at the University of La Plata where he would remain until 1961. In 1936 he was made director of the Darwinion Institute of Botany where he would remain for the next 40 years, converting the library into the largest collection of works on systematic botany in Latin America and developing their collections with exchanges between many institutions all over the world. For the entirety of this period he edited their publication Darwiniana while simultaneously working as a professor of vascular plants at UBA In 1972 the University named him professor emeritus.

From 1961 Burkart was a researcher under CONICET (the National Council for Research in Science and Technology) and published around 170 works in a diverse range of fields spanning botany, genetics and agriculture. His book Las Leguminosas Argentinas (1943 and 1952) was well renowned, as was his revision of the genus Prosopis. Whilst an excellent teacher and laboratory researcher Burkart was also active in the field, personally collecting some 30,000 specimens and travelling in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Venezuela, Brazil, Europe, South Africa and the U.S.A. for his research. He held other important administrative roles besides his directorship of the Darwinion Institute, including president of the Argentine Society of Botany (which he held twice), corresponding member of the botanical societies of America, Chile and Peru and president of the journals Physis and the publications of both the Argentine Society of Botany and of Agronomy.

His contributions won Burkart many prizes, including the Holmberg Prize in 1938 and the Shell Argentina Prize in 1968. Aside from the natural sciences his interests lay in philosophy and classical music. In 1940 Burkart married Nélida Troncoso, who had worked alongside him at the Darwinian Institute since his beginning, studying South American Verbenaceae; together they had three children, two of whom became botanists and the other, a chemist.

Sources:
Cabrera, A. L., 1975, "Arturo Burkart 1906-1975", Darwiniana 20(1-2): I-XII
Hunziker, J. H., 1976, "Arturo Erhardo Burkart (1906-1975) ", Boletín de la Sociedad Argentina de Botánica 17(1-2): 1-4.