Gundlach graduated from Marburg University, where his father was professor of physics, as Doctor of Philosophy in 1837. In 1839, he left Europe to make collections on the Caribbean island of Cuba.
During a short trip to Puerto Rico, at the request of Jesuit fathers to offer assistance in the creation of a zoological collection in 1868, when revolutionary activities were beginning in Cuba as well as Puerto Rico, he met with don Tomás Blanco, according to naturalist Dr. Agustín Stahl. A friend of Carl Wilhelm Leopold Krug, who served as German Vice Consul in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico and who paid for some of Gundlach's travels, he visited Puerto Rico in 1873, leaving Havana on 4 June 1873 on the ship Manuela, arriving in Mayagüez on 13 June and staying in Puerto Rico for approximately six months.
During that trip, Gundlach contributed to the founding of the Civil Institute for Secondary Learning or "Instituto Civil de Segunda Enseñanza". This institute was closed several months later, in keeping with the Spanish government's policy expressed to the bishops of Santiago de Cuba and of San Juan of limiting the opportunities for higher learning on both islands.
He subsequently travelled from Havana to Puerto Rico's west coast aboard the "Marsella" in September 1875. He remained in Puerto Rico for approximately one year; while he was there, he changed his name from Johannes Christoph to its Spanish equivalent, Juan Cristóbal. He wrote Contribucion á la Erpetologia Cubana (1880) and Contribucion á la entomologia Cubana in 4 volumes (1881–1884). He also wrote the first major work on the birds of Cuba, Ornitología Cubana, and his name is commemorated in the scientific names of over sixty species. His collections passed into the care of the Museo Poey in Havana, named after Cuban intellectual Dr. Felipe Poey y Aloy (1799–1891), upon his death in 1896.[1]
Legacy
In 1986, on the 90th anniversary of his death, Cuba issued a series of postal stamps commemorating Gundlach.[2]
His visits to Puerto Rico were considered so important to the development of the study of natural sciences in Puerto Rico that he is considered "the Father of Natural Sciences in Puerto Rico" and his portrait, painted by Andrés Garcés, hangs in the School of Natural Sciences at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus. To honor him, Dr. Agustín Stahl named a species of cupey tree in his honor as Clusia gundlachi. The Puerto Rico Academy of Arts and Sciences on June 26, 2008, awarded recognitions that carry Gundlach's name to 25 prominent scientists in Puerto Rico.
Species, genera and subspecies named in honor of Gundlach
^ abBeolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. ISBN978-1-4214-0135-5. ("Gundlach", p. 112; "Juan Gundlach", p. 137).
