Medicinal Plants of Brazil

Walter B. Mors is a natural products chemist with wide interests in economic botany. Born in Sao Paulo, he graduated from the University of Sao Paulo in 1942 and started his career at an agricultural research institute in Belem at the mouth of the Amazon River. In 1947, he joined the Institute of Agricultural Chemistry of the Ministry of Agriculture in Rio de Janeiro. Since 1960, he has been a free-docent of the University of Brazil (now the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro). As a member of the university's Faculty of Pharmacy, he co-founded the Natural Products Research Center and continues to collaborate there in retirement. His interests, in addition to phytochemistry and economic botany, include relations between chemistry and systematic botany, and the biodynamic properties of natural products. A full member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, he is co-author, with C.T. Rizzini, of the books, Useful Plants of Brazil (1966) and Botanica Economica Brasileira (1976). Carlos Toledo Rizzini was born in the state of Sao Paulo. After earning a medical degree in Rio de Janeiro, he practiced medicine while developing a comprehensive interest in botany. Rizzini joined the staff of the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden in 1946, and became a renowned specialist in the taxonomy of numerous groups including lichens, and the acanthus, mistletoe and cactus families. His interests in economic botany, phytogeography and ecology converged in a series of investigations of the "cerrado," the savanna vegetation of central Brazil. A full member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, he wrote Melocactus no Brasil (1982). He co-authored, with his wife Cecilia Maria Rizzini, the book Dicionario Botanico Classico Latino-Portugues Abonado (1983), and with L.X. Filho, Liquenologia Brasileiro (1976). Born in Rio de Janeiro, Nuno Alvares Pereira is a specialist in pharmacology with degrees in pharmacy and medicine. He worked as a pharmacist before becoming a teacher and researcher at the School of Medicine and Surgery of Rio de Janeiro. He later joined the University of Brazil (now the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), where he became full professor in 1974 and head of the Department of Pharmacology. Intensive studies of medicinal plants of the Brazilian flora by Pereira and his colleagues have focused on pharmacological properties of alkaloids occurring in the citrus family, some of which are antileukemic and antiviral. He also has investigated the toxic components of the aroid family and the hypoglycemic effects of antidiabetic plants. He is a member of the Brazilian National Academy of Pharmacy and an associate member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.Mors, Walter B. is the author of 'Medicinal Plants of Brazil' with ISBN 9780917256424 and ISBN 0917256425.