Emil Racoviță

Emil Racoviță (Romanian pronunciation: [eˈmil ˈrakovit͡sə]; also spelled Racovitza; 15 November 1868 – 17 November 1947) was a Romanian biologist, zoologist, speleologist, explorer of Antarctica and the first biologist in the world to study the arctic life.

Together with Grigore Antipa, he was one of the most noted promoters of natural sciences in Romania. Racoviță was the first Romanian to have gone on a scientific research expedition to the Antarctic, as well as an influential professor, scholar and researcher.

Born on the family estate, in Șurănești, Vaslui County, he started his education in Iași, where he had Ion Creangă as a teacher, and continued his secondary education at the Institutele Unite, a private high school for boys in Iași, taking his baccalauréat in 1886. He then studied law at the University of Paris, obtaining a law degree in 1889. But he did not pursue a law career, instead turning to the natural sciences. His mentor was zoologist and biologist Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers, a professor at the Sorbonne and at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. Racoviță earned a B.S. degree in 1891, and a Ph.D. degree in 1896, for a thesis on Le lobe cephalique et l’encéphale des Annélides Polychète ("The cephalous lobe and the encephalon of polychaetous annelids").

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