Naval officer, university professor, historian, Member of the Chamber of Deputies, officer in the colonial administration and researcher, Avelino Teixeira da Mota left behind a vast body of work that embraces the most varied areas of knowledge. His research on Luso-African cartography and relations, and on the Discoveries and the history of navigation, resulted in a large and noteworthy scientific output. After attending Passos Manuel High School (1931-38) and an initial year at the University of Lisbon’s Faculty of Sciences (FCUL, 1938-39), in 1939 Teixeira da Mota entered the Naval School, where he was selected for the Navy Course – a career that was eventually to lead to the rank of Vice-Admiral, which was awarded to him for distinguished service in 1981.

In 1943, Teixeira da Mota submitted “O «Regimento da Altura de Leste-Oeste» de Rui Faleiro (Subsídios para o Estudo Náutico e Geográfico da Viagem de Fernão de Magalhães)” (“The ‘Regiment for East-West Elevation’ by Rui Faleiro [Aids for the Nautical and Geographic Study of the Voyage of Fernão de Magalhães]) as his graduation dissertation. The Naval School’s teaching staff were impressed by the sound research in which a young man aged just 23 had studied and analysed the complex technical problems of the first circumnavigation. Teixeira da Mota’s careful work in those initial years of his naval life outlined the academic and scientific interests he was later to develop in his extensive body of written works: the History of the Discoveries; Nautical and Cartographic History; the Luso-Castilian rivalry of the 15th and 16th centuries; and the physical and human geographic aspects of the study of the Atlantic.

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