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Professor
Hamed A. F. Goher
(1907-1994)
"King of the Red Sea"
Egyptian Pioneer of Marine
Science
Edited By Professor Hamed A. EadScience
Heritage Center
The Person
- Hamed Gohar has appeared on television every
week for the past 18 years in his program The World of the Seas.
Small, bearded and cordial looking, he cuts a sympathetic figure
with his audience, describing the charms of marine life as well as
its vicissitudes, in a spirit of great affability.
- The popular television image is, nevertheless, a
comparatively recent development in the 84-year-old oceanographer's
career. Six decades ago Gohar initiated the first full-scale
research in ocean studies in Egypt and the Arab countries. A man,
whose serious intent has shaped his life, he never married, but
reckons the stages of his research as the landmarks in life.
- In 1931 he began research
on Xenia, or soft, corals of the Red Sea, finalized in 1939. In 1934
he published a study in the British journal, Nature, on 'The
Partnership between Fish and Anemone', on the cooperation of
clownfish and anemones in catching common prey. This subject, says
Gohar, "later became a hobby with divers and underwater
photographers who would observe the phenomenon." In 1942, 100 years
after the last specimen was recorded, Gohar verified the continued
existence of the sea mammal known as the dugong, the mermaid of
popular mythology. Until Gohar found the remains of a dugong's skull
in, the sands of Hurghada, and consequently over a span of 14 years
caught 16 specimens, the mammal was believed to have become extinct
in the Red Sea. As Gohar says, "Time and patience are important if
you want to reach a worthwhile result."
- One journalist, alluding to Gohar's
single-minded pursuit of research to the exclusion of everything
else wrote that he had "married himself off to a mermaid", but,
Gohar says, his blue eyes twinkling "I agree that I've given
practically all my life, not to one species or other, but rather to
the sea itself. Oceanography encompasses all the known sciences,
from astronomy and geology to mathematics." Hermitlike he spent 25
years in the marine biological station at Hurghada, the first to be
set up on the Red Sea coast. The station, established by the
Egyptian University in the late twenties, remained the only one of
its kind for 30 years. Gohar remembers the exact date when he first
visited it, during his summer vacation: "It was 5 June, 1931. I took
an instant liking to the coral reefs," he says.
- A former medical student, whose interest
then turned to physiology and geology, Gohar pursued his
research further into oceanographic studies. The very first
student to submit a Master of Science thesis to the newly
established Egyptian University, Gohar's arduous eight-year
research on the soft corals in Hurghada earned him a D.Sc. from
Cambridge - considered the highest recognition open to
unsupervised research.
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