Raymond Hovasse's scientific activities in Turkey (1926-1931) and the foundatıon of the Baltalimanı Zoological Station

Sevtap Kadıoğlu

Studies on the history of higher education in Turkey show that foreign scholars contributed at diverse intervals to the educational and research activities of various institutions. During the Darülfünun period (1900-1933) scholars were invited from Germany and France to improve the teaching of natural sciences and also to start research. In 1933 a large group of German-speaking scholars were summoned to Istanbul where they played an important role in the reformation of the University. Although numerous researches were conducted on scholars who were charged in the Istanbul University during the 1933 reformation, studies regarding scholars who came in 1915 and 1926 are rather scarce. The present study aims to shed light on the scientific acitivities that Raymond Hovasse, a French professor or zoology, conducted Turkey. Invited to the Faculty of Science, Istanbul University within the framework of the French-Turkish cultural agreement, Hovasse taught zoology and carried on field research during his 6 year stay from 1926 to 1931. Moreover he founded a zoological station in Baltalimanı, a village on the Bosphorus. In this station he researched the migratory behaviour of fish and opened summer courses for interested people. The station stopped functioning after Hovasse left Turkey in 1931. Although the station did not last for very long and its activities were mostly limited to Hovasse's individual efforts, it was important in terms of being the first of such research institutions in Turkey and constituting an model for the Institute of Hydrobiology which would be founded in 1951.