William Antônio Rodrigues
1928-
Brazilian botanist associated with INPA whose taxonomic work on Amazonian plants included the genus Virola, a major source of Indigenous psychoactive snuffs.
William Antônio Rodrigues is a Brazilian botanist born in São João del Rei in 1928. His work is closely associated with Amazonian botany and the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, where botanical taxonomy, herbarium collections, and natural-products chemistry supplied a shared infrastructure for studying tropical plants.
Rodrigues's contribution to the 1974 Virola theiodora article reflects that botanical context. The paper depends on comparing Yomanê snuff and arrow-poison materials with herbarium specimens of Virola, including V. theiodora and related species.
For psychedelic history, Rodrigues matters less as a public psychedelic figure than as part of the scientific apparatus that made Amazonian psychoactive plants legible to chemistry, taxonomy, and pharmacology in Brazil.
Sources in the archive
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- Maia, J. G. Soares, and William Antônio Rodrigues. "Virola theiodora como alucinógena e tóxica." Acta Amazonica 4, no. 1 (1974): 21-23.
- Rodrigues, William Antônio. "Revisão taxonômica das espécies de Virola Aublet (Myristicaceae) do Brasil." Acta Amazonica 10, no. 1, suplemento (1980).