Emil Racoviță (1868 - 1947)
He was born in Iași in a family with a special interest in culture and enjoyed the guidance of some of the most intelectual Romanians of the 19th and 20th centuries.
In primary school he had as a teacher Ion Creangă who often took the young Racoviță from the gate and from whom it is said that he got the oratorical speech with a strong Moldovan accent. Continuing his education at the "United Institutes" he had the opportunity to have a chemistry teacher Petru Poni, a history teacher at AD Xenopol, and the one who would be his most influential teacher was the professor of science and geology, the distinguished Grigore Cobălcescu. Also at this educational institute, Emil Racoviță was a colleague of Sava Anastasiu, Grigore Antipa, Dimitrie Voinov and Nicolae Leon.
In 1886 he received a scholarship to study the Faculty of Law at the Sorbonne, but the young Racoviță also attended the courses of the Faculty of Science immediately after graduating in Law. In 1896 he completed his doctorate after five years under the guidance of Professor Lacaze-Duthiers who led the Oceanological Laboratory "Argo".
While performing his compulsory military service in Iasi, Emil Racoviță received a letter from Belgium to take part in an expedition to explore Antarctica. He accepted the offer and thus became one of the first people in the world to stay over the winter at the South Pole with the famous Roald Amundsen and 17 other scientists aboard the ship "Belgium" between 1897 and 1899.
Here, Racoviță from Iași studies the behavior of Antarctic fauna and collects 1200 zoological bodies + 400 botanical bodies to bring them back to Europe.
The year 1904 brings a major change in the life of the researcher Racoviță who, on a trip to the Mediterranean Sea, arrives in a cave on the island of Mallorca where he finds a small unknown crustacean. This discovery becomes a new passion of the Romanian oceanographer, namely biospeology. Racoviță was to establish the first Institute of Speleology in the world in Cluj.
After only 15 years of activity, in this newly established branch of science, it had reached almost 800 caves explored, 20,000 cave animals collected, 41 scientific papers written on about 3400 pages.
He is considered one of the founders of world speleology and was one of the most appreciated Romanian scientists abroad. He was president of the Society of Zoology of France, a member of the Geographical Society of France, a corresponding member of the Society of Natural Sciences of Barcelona, a corresponding member of the Zoological Society of London, an Honorary Doctor of the University of Lyon, and received many other distinctions.
