Bartolomeu de Gusmão, Portuguese priest (born 1685)

Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmão was a Portuguese priest and naturalist from Colonial Brazil who was a pioneer of lighter-than-air aerostat design, being among the first scholars at that time to understand the operational principles of the hot air balloon and to build a functional prototype of such device. He is also one of the main characters in Nobel Prize-winning José Saramago's Baltasar and Blimunda.