Google has paid tribute to the late Malaysian zoologist and mammalogist, Dr. Lim Boo Liat – with a Doodle on its search page.
He was known to have start Malaysia’s Zoo Negara.
This was commemorated on the exact date the legendary scientist received Honorary Membership into the American Society of Mammalogists (ASM) on June 21, 2003.
Who is Lim Boo Liat?
He was the very first Southeast Asian (and fourth person from Asia) to have been given the Honorary Member of the association.
Lim Boo Liat grew through the tribulations of World War II as a teenager, taking odd jobs to help support his family, which led to his encounter with Orang Asli of Carey Island who educated him on identifying various animal species.
During his journey, he became a lab assistant, then a field biologist and eventually having over 80 scientific papers on vertebrates to his name before heading up the Medical Ecology Division at the Institute of Medical Research (IMR).
He became recognized as an expert by local and foreign research institutes in the study of animals and their roles in disease transmission.
Lim Boo Liat eventually 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.
He became the head of the Vector Biology Control Research Unit at the World Health Organization (WHO), where he conducted research on plagues, malaria control, and rodent control, up until his retirement in 1987.
