Moisés Santiago Bertoni

Moisés Santiago Bertoni, born Mosè Giacomo Bertoni in 1857 in Lottigna in the Swiss canton of Ticino, was a Swiss-Paraguayan naturalist, botanist and writer. After studying law in Zurich and natural sciences in Geneva he emigrated to Argentina in 1884 and moved to Paraguay in 1887, where he settled near the Iguazu Falls and founded the Guillermo Tell colony, later known as Puerto Bertoni. He founded the National School of Agriculture in Asunción in 1894 and directed it until 1904. While researching in eastern Paraguay in 1899 he was the first to describe Stevia. His work ranged over botany, meteorology, agronomy, geography, zoology and ethnography, and his bibliography exceeds five hundred publications, which left him remembered in Paraguay as el Sabio, the Sage. He died in 1929 in Foz do Iguaçu.