PROFESSOR DE MELLO

Alfredo Bachmann de Mello was born in 1924 in Goa, then Portuguese India, son of a renowned doctor and scientist of Brahmin stock, and of a Swiss mother. His High School and University studies were carried out in British India ( Bangalore & Madras) and in 1943 he sailed to Portugal to enter the Medical College in Oporto.

Unhappy with the university life in Portugal, and the climate of the prevailing dictatorship, he participated briefly in World War II as a volunteer in the British Armed Forces, having been liberated from a P.O.W. camp in Germany by the Third American Army in April 1945. Returning to Portugal , he was not successful in getting to study in an American University, since all the vacancies at that time were destined for American War Veterans ( G.I. Bill of Rights). Having a solid basis of classical languages and fluent in five European languages, he emigrated to Uruguay, South America at the end of 1946, when he started his business life as a Manufacturers' Agent.

In 1966 he started his own business, and in 1971 founded a plastic industry, having been Vice President of the Uruguayan Chamber of Industries between 1978 and 1984. For health reasons he was forced to retire in 1991, leaving his three business and factory enterprises to the care of his son. He has travelled throughout the world, and having always been a keen reader, he started to write on historical subjects. His first book in English was published in New York in 1993. He is busy writing his "Memoirs of Goa", spanning the millenary history of his home country, and in 1995 translated to Spanish his book "El verdadero Colón", with the present English version as well, titled "The real Colón - Columbus is a misnomer".

From his first marriage he has four children: Lilian, Yvonne, Sonia, and Alex. Married once again in 1979 with Emilia Sella
Reggiani, he has a 19 year-old daughter, Gioia.

E-mail: Rufina Bernardetti Silva Mausenbaum