User:Qoruja/Heloísa Alberto Torres

Heloísa Alberto Torres (Rio de Janeiro, 1895 - 1977) was a Brazilian anthropologist, well known for her studies on Marajoara pottery and her work as director of the National Museum of Brazil. She was the first female professor of the Museum. She was a part of the Brazilian National Council for Indigenous Protection, participating in its transformation into current-day National Indigenous Foundation.

Personal life
Heloísa Alberto Torres was born in 1895, in Rio de Janeiro. She was the daugher of Alberto Torres and Maria José Xavier da Silveira, and had two siblings, Marieta and Alberto. Her father was an important Brazilian thinker, who was also elected president of Rio de Janeiro State and nominated for the Brazilian Supreme Court.

Heloísa Alberto Torres studied in Petrópolis, at Colégio Nossa Senhora de Sion, after having studied for years in England. Her father died when she was 22 years old, the same age in which she decided to focus her career on anthropology, studying with professor Edgar Roquette-Pinto at the National Museum of Brazil. In 1925, she joined the ranks of that institution to work as a substitute professor in the Anthropology and Ethnography Department, led by Roquette-Pinto, becoming the first woman to join the Anthropology Department, the first woman to teach in the Museum and one of the first female employees there.

Expedition to Marajó and work at the National Museum of Brazil
Heloísa Torres's most notable expedition, to Marajó Island, happened in 1930. Following that, her studies on Brazilian pottery, and especially on Marajoara pottery, made her well known in Brazilian and worldwide academic circles. After Edgar Roquette-Pinto resigned, Heloísa Torres became the Museum's deputy director (1935-1937) and later its director, from 1938 to 1955.

Torres made continuous efforts to maintain and renew technical research staff in anthropology, geology, paleontology, botany, and zoology within the institution. She fostered the exchange with international researchers, so that the Museum became a center of interest for other highly regarded scientists, such as Ralph Linton, Alfred Métraux, Paul Rivet, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Charles Wagley, and Ruth Landes. She created and ran an institutional program aimed at training young researchers in their fields.

Death
Heloísa Torres died of a heart failure on February 23, 1977, at 81 years old. She left her house in Itaboraí, a typical Brazilian XVIII building, to her sister. After her sister's death, the house was donated to Brazilian National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage, and is now known as Heloísa Alberto Torres Culture House.