Felipe Poey Aloy

Felipe Poey Aloy (1799-1891) Cuban scientist, professor and researcher in the field of natural sciences. The results of his ichthyological studies are recognized internationally.

He studied at the Seminario de San Carlos, where he was a student of Félix Varela, as well as at the Cátedra de Derecho Patrio, and received the degree of Bachelor of Laws in 1821, after which he traveled to Spain with a view to obtaining his law degree in Madrid.

Four years later he traveled to France, where he established relationships with Aquiles Valenciennes and Jorge Cuvier on matters related to ichthyology, and with entomologists Félix Eduardo Guérin-Ménéville and Luis Alejandro Chevrolat, with whom he created the Sociedad Entomológica de París in 1832. That same year he published there his work Centuria de Lepidópteros de la Isla de Cuba.

Upon returning to the Island in 1835, he taught Modern Geography and Geography of Cuba, as well as French and Latin languages, at the Colegio de San Cristóbal de Carraguao.

The following year his book Compendio de la geografía de la Isla de Cuba was published, the first work of its kind written and printed in the country, and in 1839, the Cartilla Geográfica.

He taught the subjects of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, and Botany and Mineralogy, with notions of Geology, at the Real y Literaria {In:Universidad de La Habana}, after the secularization of education, in 1842.

He published contributions in different newspapers and magazines of his time, including La Piragua, El Faro Industrial de la Habana and La Honesta Cubana. During 1849 his work Revista zoológica de la Isla de Cuba appeared in successive issues of the Havana publication El Artista. Similarly, his articles were included in Anales de la Sociedad de Historia Natural de Madrid, and in serialized editions from the United States such as Anales del Liceo de Historia Natural de Nueva York and Boletín de la Comisión de Pesca.

Between 1851 and 1858 he undertook, in two volumes, the edition of the Memorias sobre la historia natural de la Isla de Cuba, in which the results of his zoological studies were displayed, accompanied by illustrative plates. Likewise, between 1865 and 1868 he published the two issues of the Repertorio físico-natural de la Isla de Cuba, in which contributions from numerous scientists appeared; among them, the German Juan Cristóbal Gundlach. Both the Memorias... and the Repertorio... were aimed at disseminating the discoveries of zoological species of the Island, and offering a picture of its nature through catalogs of different types.

In 1883 he sent to the Colonial Exposition of Amsterdam a manuscript version, with the respective Atlas, of his Ictiología cubana, the fruit of his work of more than fifty years, which was awarded a gold medal and a diploma of honor. Two years later that work was deposited in the Library of the Museo de Historia Natural de Madrid, while another manuscript version remained in Poey's possession, on which he continued working until the end of his days. After remaining unpublished for more than a century, it was published, in two volumes of text and an Atlas, through the efforts of various institutions—headed by the Casa de Altos Estudios Fernando Ortíz of the Universidad de La Habana—in the context of the commemoration of the bicentennial of his author's birth.

Poey joined the Real Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País (SEAP) of La Habana in 1837, and the following year he was granted the status of Member of Merit. In 1861 he was part of the group of thirty founding members of the Real Academia de Ciencias Médicas, Físicas y Naturales de La Habana, in which, by his specialty, he became part of the Commission of Natural Sciences, with the status of Member of Merit. On September 4, 1877 he was proposed as a Full Member of the Sociedad Antropológica de la Isla de Cuba, in which twelve days later he was elected president.

In his work of cultural dissemination, he promoted well-known gatherings and attended others such as those of lawyer Nicolás Azcárate, in Guanabacoa. Similarly, he was linked to the activities of the Havana lyceums; thus he presided over the Literature Section of the Liceo de La Habana, in 1858 and 1862; he delivered the discourse "Unidad de la especie humana" at the Liceo de Guanabacoa, which in 1861 distinguished him as a Member of Honor, and in 1885 he was part of the Natural Sciences Section of the Nuevo Liceo de La Habana.

He was appointed in 1851 as correspondent of the Liceo de Historia Natural de Nueva York, and member of honor of the Sociedad de Ciencias de Buffalo in 1863. He was granted membership in the Sociedad Estomatológica de Filadelfia and as correspondent of the Sociedad de Historia Natural de Boston in 1864. The Sociedad de Historia Natural y Horticultura de Massachussets incorporated him as a corresponding member in the same year, and the Academia de Ciencias de Filadelfia granted him similar responsibility in 1873. He was a member of European institutions such as the Sociedad de Amigos de la Historia Natural Berlinesa—of which he was a member of honor in 1864—, the Sociedad Española de Historia Natural, from 1872, and the Real Sociedad Científica de Londres in 1836.

Close to reaching eighty years of age, Felipe Poey was honored with the appointment of tenured professor, a status granted to professors with more than twenty years in the exercise of university teaching. He served as proprietor of the Cátedra de Geografía de Vertebrados, and was dean of the Faculty of Sciences. In his final years he devoted himself to organizing and compiling most of his scattered bibliographic output, with the aim of gathering it in a volume that he titled Obras Literarias, which came to light in 1888, and in which he revealed, once again, the intellectual stature of one who has passed to posterity as one of the greatest representatives of nineteenth-century Cuban science.

Source: EnCaribe.org