Théodore Monod - Signed Autograph Letter, National Museum Of Natural History, Dakar Ifan

Autograph letter signed by Théodore Monod (1902–2000).

A beautiful letter on National Museum of Natural History letterhead, 1946. Théodore Monod organized the transfer of documents after the war “in the least official and most discreet manner.”

April 24, 1946 – One in-8 page on letterhead from the National Museum of Natural History. Black ink. (Plexiglass frame with wooden base included). Dimensions: 21 x 13.5 cm

By 1946, Théodore Monod was already one of France’s leading naturalists, renowned for his work in marine zoology, but above all for his numerous expeditions to West Africa and the Sahara. After World War II, he actively resumed the international scientific exchanges that had been interrupted during the war. He remained director of the IFAN (French Institute of Black Africa) in Dakar, a leading research institute that he founded in 1938 and led until 1965. At the same time, he retained his positions and affiliations at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. The “Hansen documents” mentioned refer to the scientific work of the eminent Danish zoologist Hans Jacob Hansen (1855–1936), a world authority on marine crustaceans. (See below).

Beautiful signature.

Paris, April 24, 1946

Miss,

I would like to thank you for the three packages of Hansen documents that you were kind enough to have delivered to me.

This is only a provisional acknowledgment of receipt. Once these documents are in Dakar and in the hands of our librarian, we will write to you again, always in the least official and most discreet manner, as you had requested.*

Please accept, Miss, the assurance of my respectful devotion,

Théodore Monod

At the beginning of his career in the 1920s, Théodore Monod drew upon the anatomical descriptions and revolutionary classifications established by H.J. Hansen. Théodore Monod’s doctoral dissertation (published in 1926 on the Gnathiidae) reworks, expands upon, and directly discusses Hansen’s work. In the marine biology literature, the names of Monod and Hansen are often cited side by side in the identification of these species.

*H.J. Hansen spent his final years in Denmark in isolation and controversy due to his radical political and nationalist publications. In 1946, in the aftermath of World War II, officially settling a cross-border scientific estate (Denmark–France–Senegal) could have amounted to an administrative and fiscal nightmare, given the bureaucratic red tape of the colonial administration at the time. Hansen’s relatives or descendants might have preferred to hand these documents over “under the table” to Théodore Monod, their father’s scientific successor, to ensure that they would be put to good use and preserved.