Instituto Postal Dominicano — Sophie Jakowska commemorative stamp issue (December 7, 2007)

Two years after Sophie’s death, the Dominican Republic government issued a five-stamp commemorative postal series in her name. Authorized by Presidential Decree 333-06 of August 8, 2006, and released by the Instituto Postal Dominicano (INPOSDOM) on December 7, 2007 in Santo Domingo, the series carries the inscription “Dra. Sophie Jakowska (1922–2005) · Precursora de la Bioética” — Pioneer of Bioethics — across all five stamps.

Four of the stamps depict native Dominican wildlife species she championed — the manatee, hawksbill sea turtle, Hispaniolan parrot, and American crocodile — each rendered as a delicate single-line drawing with Sophie’s own handwritten signature in the corner. The fifth stamp carries her photograph. A matching first-day cover and a circular cancellation postmark complete the issue.

For a Polish-refugee biologist who arrived in Santo Domingo in the late 1970s, the postal honor is unusual: a foreign-born scientist commemorated by her adopted country’s national postal service as a Precursora — a Pioneer — of an entire field. The four wildlife species were not arbitrary; each was a Dominican conservation priority Sophie had worked on in the last decades of her life.

The five stamps

RD$ 7.00 · Manatí Antillano — Trichechus manatus manatus — the West Indian manatee. Single-line drawing.

RD$ 7.00 · Tortuga Carey — Eretmochelys imbricata — the hawksbill sea turtle.

RD$ 10.00 · Doctora Sophie Jakowska — her photograph at the center of the series, with her signature in the corner.

RD$ 10.00 · Cotorra — Amazona ventralis — the Hispaniolan parrot.

RD$ 15.00 · Cocodrilo Americano — Crocodylus acutus — the American crocodile.

First-day cover

The full INPOSDOM first-day cover, with all five stamps mounted and cancelled by the commemorative postmark, and Sophie’s signature reproduced in gold at the center:

The cancellation postmark

Circular 36mm rubber stamp, used at Santo Domingo on the day of issue:

DRA. SOPHIE JAKOWSKA · CORREOS · Día de Emisión · 07-dic-2007 · Santo Domingo, R.D.

Issue specifications

Catalogue numbers

Source

Imagery and emission data archived from the Dominican stamp-collecting blog sellosdominicanos.blogspot.com on 2026-05-22. The 7 high-resolution image scans (5 stamps + first-day cover + cancellation postmark) are preserved at OneDrive/Documents/personal/family/ancestry/sophie/inposdom_2007_stamp_issue/ alongside a verbatim Spanish-language copy of the source post.