Biography

Belgian-born botanist who settled in Argentina in 1904. Lucien León Hauman was educated in Gembloux in his home country before relocating to Argentina to take up a post in the newly created Department of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine at the University of Buenos Aires. From 1904 until 1925 he taught botany, plant pathology and agricultural microbiology and laid the foundations for the university's botanical garden in 1910, which was later developed by Lorenzo Parodi. Hauman also taught in the Faculty of Agronomy and Exact Sciences in La Plata and served as head of the botany section of the National Museum of Natural History in Buenos Aires for over ten years. He is said to have been an excellent teacher and researcher as well as a promoter of critical experimentation in biology and environmental protection.

Hauman's chief area of interest was phytogeography, conducting his studies in the regions of Rio Negro, Valdivia and the high Cordillera of Mendoza. While in South America he undertook collecting trips in Paraguay, Chile and Uruguay as well as Argentina, publishing a catalogue of Argentine phanerogamic plants (1917-1923) and later La vegetacion de la Argentina (1947).

Hauman returned to Europe in 1927 and was made professor of botany at the Free University of Brussels, where he served from 1928-1949. Here he began to research African flora, especially that of the Belgian Congo where he made many collections, as well as continuing his work on plant physiology and publishing a catalogue of pteridophytes and phanerogams of the Belgian flora (1934). Returning to Argentina in 1949 he became an honorary professor at the University of Buenos Aires and was also made an academic correspondent of the National Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences in Buenos Aires. The Lucien Hauman Botanic Garden at the University of Buenos Aires is named in his honour, as are several plant taxa including the genus Haumania J. Leonard and the Argentine journal, Haumania.

Sources:
Anon., 1966, "Crónica: Hauman, Lucien". Darwiniana 14(1): 250-251
J.J. Valla, "jaraín Botánico 'Lucien Hauman'", Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Agronomía:
http://www.agro.uba.ar/fauba/ubicacion/pabellones/botanico.htm, accessed 17 August 2009
Société royale de botanique de Belgique, 1966, "Hommage à la mémoire de Lucien Hauman ... rendu par la Société le 13 février 1966", Bulletin de la Société royale de botanique de Belgique, 100: 300-301.