Scientists
(Arranged by date of birth)

Julio Garavito Armero (1865-1920).
Mathematician, civil engineer, astronomer, physist and philosopher.
This famous engineer known as “The Learned Garavito” was one of the most important scientists Colombia has known. Garavito was a Science and Mathematics professor at the National University, the director of the Astronomical Observatory, a member of the Belgian Society of Astronomy, the French Astronomical Society, the Geographical Society of Lima and the president of the Colombian Society for Civil Engineering.
His political career included being a Bogotá City Councillor and a delegate of Cundinamarca's Legislative Assembly.
The Geographical Institute of Colombia was founded in 1902 at Garavito's initiative. He also organized “The Circle of Nine Points”, an association of nine brilliant mathematicians devoted to scientific investigation.
Garavito penned many significant writings focusing on mathematics, physics, astronomy, geography, and political economy. His works include, The Light Aberration Theory, Notes on the Flat Geometries Non Euclideans, Celestial Mechanics Treaty, Evolution of the Distribution of Wealth and Scientific Basis of Tax, and The Tables of the Moon, (unfinished, due to his death).
To honour his memory a postage stamp and a 20,000 pesos bill with his image have been put into circulation, as well as having two bronze busts erected. The “Order of Merit Julio Garavito” award was established, and two educational centres, The School of Engineering Julio Garavito Armero and the District School Julio Garavito, were founded in his name.
The International Astronomical Union in Brighton, England, honoured his memory by assigning his name to one of the Moon's craters. Garavito is the only Colombian citizen to receive such an important recognition.

Federico Lleras Acosta (1877-1938). Scientist.
Distinguished bacteriologist and veterinarian, Acosta had an extremely vast medical career. He was one of the directors of the Central Laboratory for Leprosy Investigations, president of the National Academy of Medicine, president of the Municipal Council of Bogota, professor of bacteriology and investigator.
He studied both bovine malaria and the presence of the bacillus Koch in urine. He fought a locust plague in the Colombian agricultural regions, thwarted the epidemic of enterocolitis that was developing in Bogota and studied the methods for the treatment of syphilis. He also prepared vaccines for many illnesses.
One of his most important works was the study of the cultivation of the leprosy bacillus, to which he dedicated a great part of his life.
He received the insignia of "'Knight of the Legion of Honour" of France.
In his memory, the "National Prize of Medicine Federico Lleras Acosta" was created. The dermatological Centre of the Javeriana University carries his name.

Alicia Dussan de Reichel (1920-2023)
Anthropologist, archaeologist and ethnologist.
Alicia Dussán, the pioneer of Colombian anthropology, was the co-founder and professor of the Department of Anthropology of the University of Los Andes. She also co-founded the Ethnological Museum of Magdalena, was one of the advisers in the setting up of the Gold Museum of Bogota and directed Colcultura's Museums and Restoration Department.
One of her great contributions to archaeology was the finding, together with her husband, of the oldest ceramic of the Americas near the Caribbean coast of Colombia.
This scientist is a member of the Colombian Academy of Physics, Natural and Exact Sciences, the Colombian Society of Anthropology, the Real Academy of Physics, Natural and Exact Sciences of Spain and New York Academy of Sciences. She has been awarded many decorations.
One of her most important pieces of writing, among many others, is her book on the Atanquez people who live in Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.

Rodolfo Llinás Riascos – Ph.D. in Neurophysiology, scholar and professor.
He began his accomplished career in Bogotá where he earned his M.D. degree from Javeriana University. He continued his studies in Australia as a research scholar at the Australian National University in Canberra, where he received his Ph.D. in Neurophysiology. He then moved on to the United States where he has been an associate professor at the University of Minnesota, a staff member of the Institute for Biomedical Research of the American Medical Association Education and Research Foundation in Chicago, as well as a professor of Medicine at Northwestern Univeristy in Chicago, and Iowa Wayne State University. He was the Director of the NASA/Neurolab Science Working Group and since 1976 he has been a professor and the chairman of the Department of Neuroscience at New York University School of Medicine.
He is the world's first authority in neurological research and has written several scientific books of great importance.
He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of France, the Colombian National Academy of Medicine, the Royal Academy of Medicine in Spain, and the American Philosophical Association.
Dr. Llinás has been honoured with ‘Doctor Honoris Causa' Degree in Medicine from three Spanish and two Colombian universities.
He has also been decorated with the Albert Einstein medal by UNESCO, the Cross of Boyacá and the Cross of Democracy by the Congress of Colombia. He received the John C. Krantz award in Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and in 1990, was part of the so-called “Commission of the Wise" during President Gaviria's administration. He was born in 1934.

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