Science and technology in Venezuela includes research based on exploring Venezuela's diverse ecology and the lives of its indigenous peoples.
Under the Spanish rule, the monarchy made very little effort to promote education in the American colonies and in particular in those in which they had less commercial interest, as in Venezuela. The country only had its first university some two hundred years later than Mexico, Colombia or Panama.
The first studies on the native languages of Venezuela and the indigenous customs were made in the middle of the XVIII century by the Catholic missionaries. The Jesuits Joseph Gumilla and Filippo Salvatore Gilii were the first to theorize about linguistic relations and propose possible language families for the Orinoco river basin. The Swedish botanist Pehr Löfling, one of the 12 Apostles of Carl Linnaeus, classificated for the first time the exuberant tropical flora of the Orinoco river basin. Other naturalists in the last decade of the siecle were Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin, Alexander Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland.
In the nineteenth century, several scientists visited Venezuela such as Francisco Javier de Balmis, Agostino Codazzi, Jean-Baptiste Boussingault, Mariano Eduardo de Rivero y Ustáriz, Jean Joseph D'Auxion de La Vayesse, François de Pons, José Salvany, Auguste Sallé, Robert Hermann Schomburgk, Wilhelm Sievers, Carl Ferdinand Appun, Custav Karsten, Adolf Ernst, Édouard André, Benedikt Roezl, Karl Moritz, Friedrich Gerstäcker, Anton Goering, Johann Gottlieb Benjamin Siegert, Augustus Fendler, Federico Johow, Charles Waterton, Alfred Russel Wallace, Everard im Thurn, François Désiré Roulin, Henry Whitely, Jean Chaffanjon, Frank M. Chapman, Émile-Arthur Thouar, Jules Crevaux and many others, some of whom are buried in Venezuela.
The Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research (IVIC) founded on February 9, 1959, by government decree, has its origins in the Venezuelan Institute of Neurology and Brain Research (IVNIC) which Dr. Humberto Fernandez Moran founded in 1955.
Other major research institutions include the Central University of Venezuela and the University of the Andes, Venezuela.
Notable Venezuelan scientists include nineteenth century physician José María Vargas, the chemist Vicente Marcano and the botanist and geographer Alfredo Jahn (1867–1940). More recently, Baruj Benacerraf shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, (1955), Aristides Bastidas (1980), Marcel Roche (1987) and Marisela Salvatierra (2002) have been recipients of UNESCO's Kalinga Prize for promotion of the public understanding of science. On July 2, 2012, L. Rafael Reif – a Venezuelan American electrical engineer, inventor and academic administrator – was elected president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Biology Ecology Pehr Löfling (Tolvfors Bruk, Gävle, Sweden, January 31, 1729 – San Antonio del Caroni (Guayana, Venezuela), February 22, 1756). Swedish botanist who studied at the University of Uppsala where he attended courses taught by Carl Linnaeus. When the Spanish ambassador at Stockholm asked Linnaeus to select a botanist for service in the American colonies, the professor at once named Loefling. He went to Spain in 1751 to learn Spanish, and then embarked with other scientists for Venezuela in February 1754. In Cumana he had entire charge of the department of natural history, and was assisted by two young Spanish doctors. He introduced the first microscope in Venezuela. His prematural death was considered a great loss to natural history, and especially to botany. Linnæus believed the loss irreparable. The manuscripts of Löfling, which were found after his death, were preserved by his two assistants and Linnnæus posthumously published his Iter Hispanicum, eller resa til Spanska Länderna uti Europa och America 1751 til 1756 in 1758. Parque Löefling in Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela is named after him.
Henri François Pittier (August 13, 1857, Bex, Switzerland – January 27, 1950, Caracas, Venezuela) was a Swiss-born geographer and botanist. He graduated as an engineer from the University of Jena and moved to Costa Rica in 1887, where he founded the Physical Geographic Institute and an herbarium. Pittier arrived in Venezuela in 1917, where he classified more than 30,000 plants and devoted many years to studying the flora and fauna in the country. In 1937 had achieved the creation of the Rancho Grande National Park at north of Maracay, Aragua state, the first national park of Venezuela.Tamayo, Francisco. 1985. "Imagen y huella de Henri François Pittier". INTEVEP, Caracas. 173p The plant genera Pittiera (now considered a synonym of Polyclathra), Pittierella (now considered a synonym of Cryptocentrum) and Pittierothamnus (now considered a synonym of Amphidasya) are named after him. His name is also associated with Pittier's crab-eating rat, Ichthyomys pittieri.The Eponym Dictionary of Mammals by Bo Beolens, Michael Watkins, Michael Grayson In 1953 the Rancho Grande National Park was renamed in his honour as Henri Pittier National Park.
William H. Phelps (New York, June 14, 1875 – Caracas, December 8, 1965) was an American ornithologist and businessman. He studied biology at Milton Academy and Harvard College. In the summer of 1896 he decided to go on an ornithological exploration to Venezuela following the advice of Wirt Robinson, who had visited Margarita Island the year before, and from his mentor Frank M. Chapman. After a long stay in Sucre and Monagas, he became fascinated with the country and its birds. He returned to the United States with a small collection of specimens that he brought to Chapman at the American Museum of Natural History. The specimens he collected became the basis for his first publication published with Chapman in 1897. Once he finished his studies at Harvard, Phelps returned to Venezuela in 1897, to marry Alicia Elvira Tucker and settle in Maturín. There he began one of many successful business ventures by selling coffee and in 1930 founded Radio Caracas Radio. In 1938 he founded the Phelps Collection considered the largest ornithological collection in Latin America and the largest private collection in the world. It is a mandatory study resource on tropical birds for experts who wish to know more about this area. Currently the Phelps Collection has a heritage of 80,000 birds in feathers, a thousand preserved in alcohol and 1,500 skeletons. His second son, William H. Phelps Jr. founded RCTV in 1953, became one of his foremost collaborators in all matters concerning ornithology.
Hermano Ginés (Bilbao, 1912 – Caracas, 2011). Born under the name of Pablo Mandazen Soto, Hermano Ginés arrived in Caracas in 1939, when Venezuela awoke from the lethargy of the long gomecista dictatorship. Poverty and illiteracy were combined with epidemics, when oil seemed to give a new impetus to the country. It is thus that Hermano Ginés together with committed young students of the College La Salle of Caracas, created in 1940 the Society of Natural Sciences La Salle, from which the La Salle Foundation born in 1957. These visionaries sowed the seed of science, knowledge and education, in a country urged by lights. Along with the biologist Fernando Cervigón founded the Estación de Investigaciones Marinas de Margarita ("Margarita Marine Research Station"), where, discovered and described many species of fish of the South Eastern Caribbean, in addition to teaching ichthyology courses, directed several professorial and postgraduate theses. He was the author of several works on the fish, and on the coastal and ocean environment. of Venezuela. Among these was the multi volume Los Peces Marinos de Venezuela ("The Marine Fish of Venezuela") which started publication in 1966 with its first two volumes, with the sixth and final volume being published in 2011. He was also the co founder and president of the Museo del Mar of Margarita. Several centers of La Salle Foundation today rooted in most places of Venezuela, serving its people and its Environment.
Leandro Aristeguieta (Guasipati, 1923 – Caracas, 2012), botanist graduated at the Central University of Venezuela. In 1959 participated in the design of the Park of the East (now Park Generalísimo Francisco de Miranda) together with Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, Fernando Tabora and John Stoddart, who combined the majesty of the national flora with a small but varied zoological collection. Individual number of the Academy of Physical, Mathematical and Natural Sciences, having been 1st vice-president (1997–2001), and president (2001–2003). In his honor was designated a Hall of the Faculty of Sciences of the Central University of Venezuela. Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Carabobo.
Francisco Mago Leccia (Tumeremo, Bolívar State, Venezuela, May 21, 1931 – Puerto La Cruz, Anzoátegui State, Venezuela on February 27, 2004).Schaefer, Provenzano, Pinna & Baskin (2005) – New and Noteworthy Venezuelan Glanapterygine Catfishes (Siluriformes, Trichomycteridae), with Discussion of Their Biogeography and Psammophily. American Museum Novitates, No. 3496, Mago was a distinguished Venezuelan ichthyologist who specialized in electric fish of the rivers and lagoons of South America, particularly of Venezuela. His education was Docent in Biology and Chemistry graduate from the "Instituto Pedagógico de Caracas", (today Universidad Pedagógica Experimental El Libertador), Master of Sciences (Marine Biology) from the University of Miami, Florida, U.S.A., Doctor in Sciences from Universidad Central de Venezuela. His Doctoral Thesis was entitled: “Los peces Gymnotiformes de Venezuela: un estudio preliminar para la revisión del grupo en la América del Sur” (The Gymnotiformes fish of Venezuela: a preliminary study for the revision of the group in South America).
Mago was a founding member of the Instituto Oceanográfico de la Universidad de Oriente in Cumaná Sucre state Venezuela and a founding member of the Instituto de Zoologia Tropical (IZT) de la Universidad Central de Venezuela situated in Caracas Venezuela. He was a teacher of the chair of Animal Biology, Vertebrate Biology and Systematic Ichthyology at the Biology School of Sciences Faculty of the Universidad Central de Venezuela. He was director of the Museo de Biología de la Universidad Central de Venezuela (MBUCV) and Acuario Agustín Codazzi. He was editor of the Acta Biologica Venezuelica (ABV). In 1968 he founded the Mago Collection of MBUCV considered the largest ichthyological collection in Latin America. Currently the Mago Collection has a heritage of 33,000 fishes preserved in alcohol and skeletons.