Accounts of Fraser's connections with Brazil

Copies of chapters for Fifty Years of Human Genetics: A Festschrift and Liber Amicorum to Celebrate the Life and Work of George Robert Fraser by A. Freire-Maia (pp 28-35), and E. A. Chautard-Freire-Maia (pp 87-89), and related correspondence with N. Freire-Maia 1992, 2002, and other colleagues in Brazil, 2006-2007.

1992-2007

1 file

Fraser recorded,

'The country beloved by me above all others in Latin America is Brazil. Beginning with a four-month period in 1970 as a visiting professor in the Division of Human Genetics, Department of Biology, University of São Paulo, at the invitation of a very good friend, Oswaldo Frota-Pessoa, I have spent more than six months of my life in Brazil; they have been the happiest months of my professional life. In Curitiba in 1974, I was offered hospitality in the home of Newton Freire-Maia whom I had met several times previously, and of his wife Eleidi. Newton, unfortunately, died in 2003 but his wife Eleidi Chautard-Freire-Maia made a contribution to the Festschrift and liber amicorum including a section entitled Remembrances of George and Maria (pp 87-89) which is in this folder.

I made further visits to Brazil together with my wife, Maria, in 1992, 1996 and 2006; these visits gave both of us a great deal of joy, on the last occasion dispelling for a substantial period the sense of isolation which has pervaded my life after my retirement. In his customarily warm manner, Newton used to call me “Jorginho”, and Maria, “Mariinha” (affectionate Portuguese nicknames for Little George and Little Mary). When Newton liked someone in an especially warm manner, he used to say that that person was a “flor” (flower). So, Jorginho received a surname: Florzinho (Little Flower), and Mariinha, another one: Rosinha (Little Rose).

I thoroughly enjoyed these brief exposures to the ‘jeito Brasileiro’, an expression which is virtually untranslatable except in that these two words encapsulate the spirit of Brazil and the joie de vivre characteristic of this, my beloved country.'