Gregório Bondar

Gregório Gregorievitch Bondar (1881–1959) was a Ukrainian-Brazilian agronomist and entomologist that greatly contributed to Brazilian Entomology. In honor of his contributions, an agricultural research station was created in Belmonte, Bahia and named after him.

Biography

Early life Bondar was born to a family of farmers who owned 5 hectares of land in the village of Malaia Buromca, district of Zolotonosha. There he attended elementary school, graduating in 1892. In 1894, his family emigrated to the department of Yeniseysk, in Siberia. There he has worked for a year as a farmer, being later appointed as a clerk for the municipality. In 1896, he moved to Kansk, where he worked as a clerk at the police department. In 1899, he quit his job and went back to school in Krasnoyarsk, graduating in 1902. Between 1902 and 1905, he worked as Elementary School teacher in Yeniseysk.

Imprisonment and first migration to Brazil In 1905, Bondar was drafted by the military to fight in the Russo-Japanese War. In the same year, he was arrested for subversive political activities. He gained amnesty with the October Manifesto in the same year, joining an armed uprising in Krasnoyarsk a month later. He was again arrested, escaping on May 20, 1906. He migrated to Manchuria under the identity of Gregório Kogutovsky, where he worked as a teacher in Hailar District until 1908. In that year, he moved to France to attend the University of Nancy, where he graduated as agronomist in 1910. Unable to go back to Russia, he moved to Brazil. He initially worked as a free-lance photographer, being hired in 1911 as research assistant in the plant pathology department of the Campinas Agronomical Institute. In 1913, he received Brazilian citizenship and was appointed professor of agricultural zoology and entomology at the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture.

He has described 318 species of insects, including many pests of the plants he studied. The Bondar collection was acquired by David Rockefeller and donated to the American Museum of Natural History, including his type specimens. Most of his entomological research was published in a series of papers named Notas Entomológicas da Baía, published between 1937 and 1950 the journal Revista de Entomologia.