Google has honored the late Dr. Lim Boo Liat – the eminent Malaysian zoologist and mammalogist who helped start Zoo Negara – with a Doodle on its search page today.
The tribute comes on the anniversary of the legendary scientist's reception of an Honorary Membership into the American Society of Mammalogists (ASM) on June 21, 2003, which made him the very first Southeast Asian (and fourth person from Asia) to become an Honorary Member of the association – an award that dates all the way back to 1919.
Lim's history is a storied one – having gone through the tribulations of World War II as a teenager, he eventually took on odd jobs to help support his family, which eventually led him to encounter the Orang Asli of Carey Island who educated him on identifying various animal species.
His journey then saw him become a lab assistant, then a field biologist studying host-parasite relationships and zoonotic diseases, and then moving up the ladder to eventually having over 80 scientific papers on vertebrates to his name before being asked to head up a newly-created Medical Ecology Division at the Institute of Medical Research (IMR).
Lim gradually became recognized as an expert by both local and foreign research institutions in the study of animals and their roles in disease transmission, and even created the concept of "ecological labeling by parasite pattern", which posited that the parasites and food habits of small mammals could be used as good indicators of their behavioral habits in their natural environments.
This finding of his was published in the Zoological Society of London's Journal of Zoology in 1967.
All of this happened despite him having no formal education, which impressed foreign academics so much that they created a sponsored path for him to pursue a Master's Degree at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland – despite not yet having a Bachelor's Degree among his credentials.
Eventually, he returned to Malaysia in 1972 as a full-fledged zoologist to continue running the Medical Ecology Division, before receiving a PhD in Zoology from Universiti Sains Malaysia in 1977.
Following this, he was welcomed to the offices of the World Health Organization (WHO), where he became the head of the Vector Biology Control Research Unit which conducted research on plagues, malaria control, and rodent control, up until his retirement in 1987.
Along the way, however, Lim also managed to discover a new species of the mountain reed snake, Macrocalamus gentingensis, in Genting Highlands, Pahang (found nowhere else in the world), and has since had many other animals species named after him by scientists both local and foreign.
At the end of it all, Lim was dubbed "the father of zoology", and ended his career as one of the most respected zoologists on the international scene, with his work now recognized and cited in many journals and publications around the world.
“Dr. Lim was an outstanding mammalogist and his accomplishments are highly regarded throughout the world. He was honored by the American Society of Mammalogists as one of our Honorary Members," said Dr. Robert M. Timm, a historian and past president of the American Society of Mammalogists. "This was conferred by a vote of the entire membership attending our annual meeting in June, 2003."
"Honorary Members are elected in recognition of distinguished service to the science of mammalogy. It is considered the Society’s highest honor.”
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Cover image sourced from National University of Singapore and Google.
