Arturo Gómez-Pompa Professor of Ecology and Botany in the Faculty of Sciences of the National University in the Institute of Biology at UNAM. These distinctive and academic positions have gained Gómez-Pompa a prestigious reputation in the ecological world. He discovered the use of Theobroma cacao, or the tree of chocolate, as ancient crops in rejolladas and cenotes within the Yucatán Peninsula. This confirmed his hypothesis on the anthropogenic origins of the Mayan forests and advanced future research in the domestication of tropical trees. Gómez-Pompa created a database for the Flora of Veracruz project in the 1960s that is still utilized to this
Arturo Gómez-Pompa y realidades. Bol. Soc. Bot. Mexico. 63: 33-41. Whikus, R., M. de la Cruz, L. Mota-Bravo, A. Gomez-Pompa. 1998. Genetic diversity and relationships of wild cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) in southern Mexico. Theoret. And Appl. Genet. 96: 621-627. Arturo Gómez-Pompa Arturo Gómez-Pompa (born 1934 in Mexico City) is a well-known tropical biologist who is currently a scientific advisor for the Tropical Research Center of the Universidad Veracruzana (CITRO) and a distinguished professor emeritus of botany at the University of California, Riverside. He made various notable contributions to the field of tropical ecology over the years through the creation of databases