Portuguese admiral, aviator, author, physician, geographer, and navigator.

* 17 november 1869, Belem, Lissabon -

†  18 februari, 1959, Lissabon 

He studied at the Polytechnic School from 1885-1886, before entering the Naval School. After completing his course there in 1888, he took part in the next year in the garrison of the corvette Alfonso de Albuquerque took part in the military operations of Tungue. In 1900 he was a delegate from Portugal for the demarcation of the frontiers north and south of Tete. In 1906, as chief of the geodesic mission in Eastern Africa, he began to draw up a map of that colony. From 1912 to 1914 he was the head of the geodesic mission of St. Thomas. In the period from March to June of 1922 he gained international distinction when he and Commander Artur de Sacadura Freiere Cabral aboard the modest 350-horsepower hydroplane Lusitania accomplished the aerial crossing from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro. This was the first time that aerial navigation was accomplished by procedures proper to navigation in the air. Gago Coutinho made use of navigation tables especially adapted for this purpose and a sextant of his own invention.

In 1928 he was made an active member of the Academy of Sciences. In 1928 he was named president of the commission to reorganize the geographic, surveying, and cartographic services. In that same year the Ministry of the Colonies commissioned him to make cartographic studies in France and Italy and to study in Brazil those cartographic documents which are of a historical nature. In 1932 he was charged with studying the experimental results of modern procedures in aerial map-making in Italy, France, and Brazil. In 1933 he returned to Mocambique for further geographic study. He was the author of the following books: Algumas determinacoes de longitude feitas ultimamente em Africa pela missao da fronteira do Barotze (1915); As determinacoes de latitude feitas pela missao da fronteira do Barotze (1915); Impressoes de duas viagens atraves de Africa entre Angola e Mocambique (1915); Relatorio da Missao Geodesica de S. Tome (1920); Relatorio da viagem aerea Lisboa-Rio-de-Janeiro (1923); Tentativa de interpretacao simples da Teoria da Relatividade restrita (1926); O Roteiro da viagem de Vasco da Gama e a sua versao nos Lusiades (1930); Desdobramento da derrota de Vasco da Gama nos Lusiadas (1931); Possibilidade da rota unica de Vasco da Gama em Os Lusiades. Impossibilidade de Vasco da Gamaler de Cabo-Verde navegado para o Sul (1931); Pela segunda vez, possibilidade de ler em Os Lusiadas uma rota unica de Vasco da Gama (1933); Continuacao dos erros em que se apoiou o desdobramento da rota de Vasco da Gama em Os Lusiadas (1934); Passagem do Cabo Bojador (1935);and Influencia que as primitivas viagens portuguesas a America-do-Norte tiveram sobre o descobrimento das Terras de Santa-Cruz (1937). Admiral Gago Coutinho died in Lisbon on February 18, 1958