Scientific Career
He discovered a new mineral originated in Bohemia (now Czech Republic) and called it Humboldtine (an iron-oxalate), in honor to Alexander von Humboldt, his mentor and friend. He published his first scientific works about that issue among others in 1821 in France.
The president of Gran-Colombia, the liberator Simón Bolívar, decided to contract European scientists to investigate the available sources of his new formed nation, and to push with that the development of natural sciences and mining technology in South America at all. Bolivar's main target of that project was to develop the economy of the young nation. The minister of Gran-Colombia in Paris, Francisco A. Zea, contracted Mariano Eduardo in May 1822, who had been highly recommended by Alexander von Humboldt, to found and to manage a mining school in Bogotá together with a group of young European scientists. Therefore Mariano Eduardo made the necessary trip preparation. He bought some laboratory equipment and ordered constructions of precisions instruments for certain measurements.
Mariano Eduardo returned to South America and arrived in November 1822 at La Guaira, Venezuela. He studied in Venezuela the thermal springs of Mariara and Onoto, the exploitation of mineral salts in Urao Lake and the secretion of the cow-tree (this tree produces drinkable milk) and he also made barometric observations. He left Venezuela and arrived in Bogotá, Colombia, in May 1823. He inaugurated in Bogotá a museum of natural history and a mining school in November 1823 as its first director. Mariano Eduardo and his scientific group did expeditions to the orient plain of Colombia. He published the report Itinerario de los Llanos de San Martín y del río Meta in his Colección de memorias científicas …, printed in 1857.
Simón Bolívar (president of Gran-Colombia 1819-1830 and also president of Peru 1824-1827) enabled Manuel Eduardo’s return to his home country Peru. Mariano Eduardo left Bogotá and arrived in Lima at the end of 1825. The government of Peru appointed him in March 1826 as general director of mining, agriculture, public instruction and museum. He founded in 1828 the first Mining School of Lima (today Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería) and the first National Museum of Natural History, Antiquities and History of Peru (today Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia del Perú).
Mariano Eduardo made scientific studies, traveled through Peru and founded in Lima with Nicolas Fernandez de Piérola a journal of natural sciences (Memorial de Ciencias Naturales y de Industria Nacional y Extranjera), where he published between 1827 and 1829 a lot of scientific articles and papers about amalgamation of silver, exploitation of guano, analysis of the mineral water from the thermal springs of Yura and other locations in Arequipa, reports of the visited mine areas in Peru and description of gold, silver and ceramic idols.
In 1829 general Antonio Gutiérrez de la Fuente made a revolt against the government and became the new president of Peru. He cut the position of the direction of mining, because of actual economic crisis. This and the unstable political situation in Peru induced Mariano Eduardo to leave Peru and to immigrate to Chile, where he made studies about meteorology, mineralogy and geology.
Read more about this topic: Mariano Eduardo De Rivero Y Ustariz
Famous quotes containing the words scientific and/or career:
“The care of a house, the conduct of a home, the management of children, the instruction and government of servants, are as deserving of scientific treatment and scientific professors and lectureships as are the care of farms, the management of manure and crops, and the raising and care of stock.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)