Abstract:
Professor Jan Cornelis Bonsma is truly one of the outstanding scientists produced by this University and South Africa. To appropriately honour him on his 80th birthday, the University of Pretoria undertook to publish a selection of his research papers which reflect his important scientific contribution to the animal industry of, particularly, the tropics and subtropics. The editors took the liberty of selecting, metricating and editing nine of his vast output of scientific and technical papers for reproduction in this volume. These papers cover the field
of his endeavors in the ecology of domestic animals - of which he, together with A.O. Rhoad, was decidedly a pioneer and leading exponent in the 1940s and 1950s - as well as environmental physiology - where his keen observational powers were the basis of many advances which ultimately led to, inter alia, the creation of the Bonsmara breed of cattle. This name, indeed appropriate, was suggested by his
lifelong friend Jim Galpin, and marks a monument to his scientific capabilities. One wonders if any other scientist in the field of animal breeding and genetics has been thus honoured! Jan Bonsma seriously entered the arena of livestock ecology with a paper published in 1940 in Farming in South Africa, then a reputable professional journal. The title was "The influence of climate on cattle. Fertility and hardiness of certain breeds", and the contribution was coauthored
by his early assistants at the Messina Experimental Farm in the dry-tropical Limpopo basin, G. D. J. Scholtz and F. J. G. Badenhorst. However, he clearly made his mark in international science with a paper which appeared in the renowned Cambridge Journal of Agricultural Science in 1949, entitled "Breeding cattle
for increased adaptability to tropical and subtropical environments".
