Professor João Gabriel Baptista's studies and the consolidation of Geography as a scientific field in Piauí in the second half of the 20th century

Abstract

In the second half of the 20th century, João Gabriel Baptista (1920-2010), an engineer graduated in Bahia in 1946, became a university professor in 1962 in the Geography course at the Catholic Faculty of Philosophy of Piauí. From then on, he began to publish a prolific production about the geography of Piauí, inserting himself into the networks of intellectual sociability and academic spaces existing at that time in the state. This conjuncture allowed the individual to become an intellectual and develop a systematic production in the field of Geography of Piauí, with the publication of seven authored books, being one of the main responsible for the constitution of the scientific knowledge of geography in the state. The objective of this article was to analyze the historical conditions that enabled the individual's insertion into these networks, the elaboration of his thoughts and Geography works, using bibliographic and documentary research. The relevance of the historical context was highlighted for his constitution as an intellectual, for the production of his works, and his relevance to Geography in Piauí.