Before the arrival of the Portuguese royal court in Rio de Janeiro in 1808, foreigners were not allowed to enter Brazil. Everything changed from that point on. The flora, fauna, and customs of this country aroused great interest among European scientists of all nationalities. They undertook field and scientific expeditions across the country that lasted several months, if not several years, encouraged by Brazilian authorities eager to amass knowledge and develop their own institutions. The botanist Auguste de Saint-Hilaire spent six years in Brazil between 1816 and 1822 and brought back thousands of specimens that enriched the collections of the Museum of Natural History in Paris. Saint-Hilaire’s work earned him a bust in the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro. Most expedition teams included painters and draftsmen in their ranks, to make visual records of their discoveries. Thus Aimé-Adrien Taunay and Hercule Florence (1804-1879) took part in the expedition to Mato Grosso and Pará (1825-1829) led by the Russian consul Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff. Taunay drowned in the Guaporé River; Florence, who settled permanently in Brazil, developed several innovative processes related to photography and printing.

The imperial government willingly turned to Europeans to assist in the advancement of its scientific institutions. In 1875, French mineralogist Claude-Henri Gorceix founded the Ouro Preto Mining School, in Minas Gerais. Around the same period, physician Louis Couty studied the properties of curare and several other plants at the National Museum.

French engineers and scientists became international celebrities. Louis Pasteur, the renowned scientist to whom we owe, among other things, “pasteurization” and the rabies vaccine, is one of the few Frenchmen honored with streets named after him in several Brazilian cities, despite the fact he never set foot there.

Visits and exchanges expanded throughout the twentieth century. In 1926, the French-Polish scientist Marie Curie, accompanied by her daughter Irène, came to Rio to give a series of lectures. She was the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne, the first to head a laboratory, and the first to receive a Nobel Prize, the 1903 Physics Prize, shared with her husband Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel. In 1911, she was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. As for her daughter Irène, she received, together with her husband Frédéric Joliot, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935.

Academic Diplomacy

In the early twentieth century, scholars led by psychology professor Georges Dumas sought to expand the influence of French science and culture in Latin America, especially in Brazil. In 1908, with that goal in mind, the Groupement des universités et Grandes Écoles de France pour l’Amérique latine (Group of French Universities and Grandes Écoles for Latin America) was founded to organize exchanges and courses. Thus, in 1911, the diplomat and historian Manuel de Oliveira Lima gave a series of lectures on Brazilian history at the University of Paris, in the Sorbonne. His course was published under the title Formação histórica da nacionalidade brasileira (Historical Formation of the Brazilian Nation). Along the same lines, in 1922, the Franco-Brazilian Institute of Higher Culture was founded jointly in Paris and Rio de Janeiro to promote scientific exchanges between the two countries.

When the first universities are created in Brazil in 1934 and 1935, Georges Dumas recruits professors for the University of São Paulo (USP) and for the University of the Federal District (UDF). This is how historians Fernand Braudel, Henri Hauser and Victor-Lucien Tapié, sociologist Roger Bastide, geographers Pierre Monbeig and Pierre Deffontaines, philosopher Claude Lévi-Strauss, to name just a few, carried out their activities for several years in these young institutions.

After 1945, growing numbers of Brazilian researchers went to France for stays that were more or less long or more or less imposed. The 1964 civil and military coup expelled notable scientists from Brazil, such as malaria specialist Luiz Hildebrando Pereira da Silva, who worked at the CNRS and the Pasteur Institute, or archaeologist Niède Guidon, who had to seek refuge in France and returned with a Franco-Brazilian archaeological mission.

Since 1979, the French Committee for the Evaluation of University and Scientific Cooperation with Brazil (COFECUB), CAPES and CNPq have worked to promote joint research projects and bring teams from both countries closer together through mobility programs.

The Guatá Program

Since 2023, the French Embassy in Brazil has granted scholarships to Indigenous Brazilian doctoral students for periods of 6 to 12 months at French higher education institutions. After a pioneering experience at Paris 8 University, the program has becomes permanent and grows each year.

The “Guatá” (“to walk” in Tupi-Guarani) fellows are hosted at Paris 8, Paris-Nanterre, Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris-Est-Créteil, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales at the Collège de France, and the Saint-Étienne Mining School. The Brazilian partner universities in 2025 are Unicamp, UnB, UEA, UFGD, UFPE, UFRR, UFMG, UFPA, Unilab and USP.

Santos-Dumont, a Bridge Between France and Brazil

The name Alberto Santos-Dumont (1873-1932) is, in itself, a symbol of Franco-Brazilian relations. The grandson of a French immigrant and the son of an engineer and coffee grower, Alberto Santos-Dumont spent his life between Brazil and France, where he carried out most of his feats as an aviation pioneer. Around 1900, the Paris region was, in fact, a dynamic place for the innovations of the day, namely the automobile and aeronautics. Santos-Dumont was first interested in the “lighter-than-air” – balloons, which are very difficult to steer – and later in the “heavier-than-air.” In 1901, he won the Deutsch de la Meurthe Prize, managing to circle the Eiffel Tower with his airship No. 6, taking off from the France aerodrome in Saint-Cloud and returning in less than 30 minutes. In 1902, another Brazilian aeronaut, Augusto Severo, was less fortunate and suffered a fatal accident in Paris, where a street bears his name. In 1906, aboard his 14-bis airplane, Santos-Dumont achieved a flight of 220 meters. After this brief but highly applauded flight, he continued his experiments and developed a lightweight aircraft, “La libellule” (The Dragonfly), better known as the “Demoiselle” (The Young Lady). Santos-Dumont became the “darling” of Parisian socialites and received all kinds of tributes. In 1904, at his request, watchmaker Cartier developed a wristwatch, more practical than the pocket watch, worn in vest pockets, so he could use it during flights, but which until then had been seen as a feminine accessory. By wearing a watch on his wrist, Santos-Dumont launched a lasting male fashion trend.

It was French admiration for Santos-Dumont that led Compagnie Air France’s seaplane route between France and South America, launched in 1933, to be named after him.

France-Brazil Liaisons

In the late 1920s, the Compagnie Générale de l’Aéropostale (1927–1931), commonly called Aéropostale, established air routes from Toulouse (southwest France) to transport mail to Africa and South America, with several stops along the way. From Natal, in Rio Grande do Norte, seaplanes made hops to Rio de Janeiro and continued their route to Uruguay and Argentina. Navigation instruments were rudimentary, and flights were very risky. One of the company’s pilots was the writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince, whose literary work is set against the backdrop of this unique experience. After the company went bankrupt, the service was taken over by Air France. However, travelers continued to cross the Atlantic by ship until the 1960s.

Video 1: INTERVIEW – Projet GUATÁ #1 Mairú.

Video 2: INTERVIEW – Projet GUATÁ #2 Autaki.

Video 3: INTERVIEW – Projet GUATÁ #3 Alicia.

Video 4: INTERVIEW – Projet GUATÁ #4 Adriana.