Hermenegild Santapau (full name in his native Catalan, Ermenegild Santapau i Bertomeu) was born at
La Galera, in the Catalan
province of Tarragona, Spain, on 5 December 1903 and became a member of the
Society of Jesus based at
Gandia city in
Valencia at the age of 16. Moving to London, he graduated in botany with honours (BSc Hons) from the
University of London from where he, later, obtained his doctoral degree (PhD) He also secured an associateship diploma from the
Royal College of Science and another diploma from the parent institute of
Imperial College of London. From 1934, Santapau worked in Eastern
Pyrenees and
Italian Alps collecting plant specimens, for four years. After doing two years of research from 1938 at the herbarium of the
Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, England, he joined
St. Xavier's College, Mumbai as a member of the faculty of Botany in 1940. He also served as an accredited lecturer for post graduate studies in botany at the universities of
Mumbai,
Pune,
Agra and
Kolkata. When the
Government of India decided to revive the
Botanical Survey of India, Santapau was appointed as the chief Botanist in 1954. He served at the BSI till 1967, holding the post of the director from 1961. He headed the Indian delegation to the tenth edition of the
International Botanical Congress held at Edinburgh in 1954 and represented India at the
International Standards Organisation conference of 1964 held at New Delhi. He was the leader of the delegation of botanists who toured USSR for three months in 1962. Santapau returned to the
St. Xavier's College, Bombay after his retirement from the
Botanical Survey of India in 1967 and worked there as the rector till his death, aged 66, on 13 January 1970. ==Legacy and honours==