Pedro Joaquín Bermúdez

He was born in Vega Alta, Province of Las Villas, in Cuba, obtaining the degree of Doctor in Pharmacy in 1935 and Doctor in Natural Sciences in 1938.

He devoted special attention to terrestrial mollusks, managing to assemble a collection of 10,000 specimens, which he later donated to the Poey Museum of the University of La Habana and to the Museum of Comparative Zoology of Harvard University.

Illustrious Cuban paleontologist. Barely a year after graduating as Doctor in Pharmacy from the University of La Habana (1935), the "John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation" of New York awarded him a fellowship for two years (1936-1937). During this period he devoted himself intensely to the study of foraminifera, advised by Dr. Joseph A. Cushman at the Cushman Laboratory for Foraminiferal Research, in Sharon, Massachusetts.

From a very early age, young Bermúdez felt an irresistible interest in the study of nature, beginning alongside Dr. Salvador de la Torre y Huerta, with whom he studied the subject of Natural History at the Institute of Secondary Education in Santa Clara. Dr. de la Torre recommended his student to his brother, the eminent Cuban scholar Dr. Carlos de la Torre, who knew how to appreciate the qualities of the young naturalist and appointed him his honorary assistant for many years at the University of La Habana.

In 1948 he completed his degree of Doctor in Natural Sciences at the aforementioned University, where years later he held the position of professor of the zoology chair.

From his student years, Bermúdez conducted numerous collecting trips for terrestrial mollusks throughout the island, managing to assemble more than 10,000 lots of species, a large percentage of which included new species for science. In this way he collaborated with his teacher in increasing his collection and at the same time began an extensive private collection of Cuban mollusks.

With the arrival in Cuba of American geologist Dr. Robert H. Palmer and his wife, Mrs. Dorothy Palmer, Bermúdez's interest arose in the study of living and fossil foraminifera of the country, to which he dedicated himself entirely, after donating his collection of terrestrial mollusks to the "Felipe Poey" Museum of the University of La Habana. Part of this collection is found in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.

The various geological surveys conducted by Bermúdez, often in the company of the Palmers and sometimes even alone, allowed him to familiarize himself with the stratigraphy and general geology of Cuba, as well as to assemble an enormous quantity of paleontological samples, with which he began his valuable collection of foraminifera. In this collection are preserved the types of numerous new species for science, which were described by him and his collaborators.

In 1935, Dr. Bermúdez published his work Foraminifera of the North Coast of Cuba, an excellent source of information about these organisms, which since 1839, when Alcides D'Orbigny published his book on recent foraminifera of Cuba in La Sagra's work, no study had been conducted.

In 1938, Dr. Bermúdez participated in an oceanographic campaign aboard the ship ATLANTIS, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, enriching his collection with samples from the deep seas surrounding Cuba, and of recent foraminifera. Subsequently he was hired by the petroleum company Standard Oil of New Jersey to work as a micropaleontologist in the Dominican Republic, from where he published the excellent work "Smaller Foraminifera of the Dominican Republic".

Transferred to Cuba, he worked for several years at Standard Oil Co. of Cuba and during this time had the opportunity to study extensive collections of paleontological samples from Cuba, Panama, Costa Rica, and Guatemala, increasing his stratigraphic knowledge of Central America.

In 1949 he completed his work "Contribution to the Study of Cuban Cenozoic", published in 1950, where for the first time in Cuba a study of the stratigraphy of the tertiary was made, based primarily on microfossils. Two years later, in 1952, he published his work Contribution to the Study of Rotaliform Foraminifera.

He was transferred to Creole Petroleum Corporation in Venezuela (subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey), where he continued preparing his publication "The Geological Formations of Cuba", whose materials he donated to Cuba on his last visit in 1960. This manuscript was delivered to his nephew, also the well-known micropaleontologist Dr. Gustavo Furrazola y Bermúdez. The complete text of this work was published by the now non-existent Cuban Institute of Mineral Resources, which constitutes a work of obligatory consultation for scholars of Cuban Stratigraphy, Geology, and Paleontology.

For several years Dr. Bermúdez provided his professional services at the Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons in Caracas and at the same time was professor of Micropaleontology at the Central University of Venezuela.

Dr. Pedro Joaquín Bermúdez was a member of numerous scientific societies, among which may be cited:
Honorary Member of the Cuban Institute of Petroleum
Lifetime Member of the Cuban Society of Natural History
Fellow of the Geological Society of America
Fellow of the Paleontological Society of America
Member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists
Member of the Cushman Foundation for Foraminiferal Research
Member of the Society of Economical Paleontologists and Mineralogists
Member of the La Salle Natural History Society of Caracas
Member of the Mexican Society of Petroleum Geologists
Member of the Swiss Paleontological Society
Member of the Geological Society of France, etc.

Bermúdez's magnificent collection of Foraminifera constitutes the most complete in the Caribbean-Antillean region and is found at the Central University of Venezuela. In addition, Dr. Bermúdez possessed the most complete specialized library on geology and paleontology in the Caribbean-Antillean region.

In addition to his studies on foraminifera and his early works on terrestrial mollusks, he was an expert in other fields of zoology and botany, such as birds of eastern Venezuela and orchids and Heliconias, about which he published some notes in widely circulated newspapers. Dr. Bermúdez had other interests besides Natural Sciences, as evidenced by the publications: The Trajectory of Humboldt and Bonpland in Eastern Venezuela (1962) and The Chinchorro Nets of Curagua (1959).

Without a doubt, his magnificent work and dedication constitute an example to follow for later generations of Latin American micropaleontologists and geologists.