Vernon E. Thatcher, Brazilian parasitologist.

Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Paraná, Brazil. Native of Medford, Oregon (USA), he had a typical northwestern childhood, with activities closely associated to the nature of the region. Early in his youth, Vernon became a competent taxidermist. At 14, he became interested in South America through readings and enrolled in a Spanish course in school, which he continued at the University. This would later define his professional choices.

Vernon graduated in 1952 at the Oregon State University (OSU) and found time between 1952 and 1954 to get his master's degree under Dr Ivan Pratt on the helminths of the Pacific Terrapin. I meant, “found time” because he was drafted by the Army at the same time, as a member of the medical core. After several years working in the Army in Europe and back in the States, at the Texas A & M Research Foundation in Grand Isle as an oyster biologist, Vernon enrolled on the PhD program of the Louisiana State University, at Baton Rouge (Louisiana).

In 1961, he completed his PhD program under Dr Harry J. Bennett with studies on the trematodes of reptiles from Tabasco, Mexico. Despite being offered positions in the States, Vernon decided to step into the tropical Americas and became an employer of the Gorgas Institute in Panama, where he studied the cycle of leshmaniasis and echinococcosis.

In 1967, with Dr. Paul Beaver, Vernon moved to Colombia, were he worked at the Universidad del Valle, in Cali, until 1975, when he moved to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Vernon has been a field person in the tropics all these years, an adventurer, indeed, hunting and fishing for parasites under difficult conditions that only people that worked in the tropics know and most would consider unbearable. After two years in Rio, Vernon was hired by the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazonia (INPA) as the PI of the Laboratory of Fish Parasitology.

These were his most prolific years. Vernon’s contributions to the parasitology of wild animals, especially fishes, in the tropics add more than 150 papers in the area of taxonomy of parasitic Protozoans, Platyhelminthes, Nematoda, Acanthocephala, and Crustacea. He authored several books, including “Amazon Fish Parasites” (two editions), “Isopods of South American Fishes”, and Trematodeos Neotropicais”. Vernon was also responsible for the first extensive efforts in the understanding of the fauna of Monogenoidea/Monogenea, Ergasilidae (Copepoda) and in the Neotropical Region in collaboration of many other scientists.

Since he considered that a parasitologist should be capable of working with many groups, Vernon was always looking for something new to work on. He completed his contributions to fish parasitology studying Isopoda of marine and freshwater fishes from Brazil. After retirement from INPA in 1999, Vernon Thatcher moved to Curitiba, Brazil, where he acted as a visiting professor until his last days. He was an active author in the Revista Brasileira de Zoologia and Zoologia, and served as a member of the International Committee of our publications for two years. Vernon’s first wife, Leah, passed away over 20 years ago. Later, Vernon married Dr. Bedsy Dutary, a world known virologist that he knew during his time at Gorgas in Panamá and re-encountered later in life. He leaves no kids but many scientific sons and daughters and a great number of friends that learned to love him and his always well-placed jokes. He will be missed as a friend and as an exciting scientist!

More about his unique life experience is available in the book by Jeanette Thatcher Marshall, his sister, entitled “Jaguars, Fish and Microscopes: An Oregon Zoologist’s conquest of Tropical America” Thatcher publications Inc., 263 pp.

Taxon names authored

(List may be incomplete)

• 34 taxon names authored by Vernon E. Thatcher