As a boy, influenced by his father's porcelain manufacturing plant at Mogi das Cruzes, he wished to follow a career in engineering, but changed radically when he had the opportunity in high school to attend a lecture by noted French physician and professor André Dreyfus and a screening of the film "The Story of Louis Pasteur", starring Oscar-winning actor Paul Muni in the title role.
In 1950, during an expedition to collect wild Drosophilidae in the shore, in São Paulo state on the southeast Brazilian coast Crodowaldo Pavan rediscovered the species and named it Rhynchosciara angelae.
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The fly is scientifically notable for the physiology of its polytene chromosomes and developmentally regulated amplified puffs, first observed by Crodowaldo Pavan.