Mariano Eduardo de Rivero y Ustariz
Mariano Eduardo de Rivero y Ustariz (October 12, 1798 – November 6, 1857) was a prominent Peruvian scientist, geologist, mineralogist, chemist, archaeologist, politician and diplomat.
His publications about his discovery of Humboldtine (an iron-oxalate), demonstrating the existence of organic-minerals; about deposits of copper and sodium nitrate (saltpeter) near Tarapacá in the Atacama Desert; about bird-guano and coal in Peru and their possibilities of industrialization as well were forward-looking and made him a pioneer of mining education in South America and the most notable Peruvian scientist of the 19th century.
After noticing his aptitudes and qualifications, his family sent him to Europe and, at the age of twelve in 1810, he started his European education in England, a major rival of Spain at the dawn of the wars of independence.
After three years in which he maintained a constant correspondence with his European colleagues, Rivero left Colombia because of a lack of economic and political support.
Reinserted in the European academic world, he gave several talks on Peruvian resources and antiquities until he died in Paris in 1857, directly after publishing a collection of his scientific memoirs in Brussels.
He discovered a new mineral originated in Bohemia (now Czech Republic) and called it Humboldtine (an iron-oxalate), in honor to Alexander von Humboldt, his mentor and friend.
The president of Gran-Colombia, the liberator Simón Bolívar, decided to contract European scientists to investigate the available sources of his new formed nation, and to push with that the development of natural sciences and mining technology in South America at all.
The minister of Gran-Colombia in Paris, Francisco Antonio Zea, contracted Mariano Eduardo in May 1822, who had been highly recommended by Alexander von Humboldt, to found and to manage a mining school in Bogotá together with a group of young European scientists.
Mariano Eduardo returned to South America and arrived in November 1822 at La Guaira, Venezuela with the French chemist Jean Baptiste Boussingault.
They studied in Venezuela the thermal springs of Mariara and Onoto, the exploitation of mineral salts in Urao Lake and the secretion of the cow-tree (this tree produces drinkable milk) and he also made barometric observations.
He published in Vienna 1851 with Johann Jakob von Tschudi, acting as co-author, their common publication Antigüedades Peruanas about the Inca Empire.
That book was a profound work about the Inca Empire, its history, origin, government system, scientific knowledge, language, religion, customs and monuments.
