Vilmos Kőfaragó-Gyelnik (March 30, 1906 – March 15, 1945) was a Hungarian

botanist Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...

and lichenologist. Prior to earning his PhD in 1929 from Budapest University, he spent a year in

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...

to help organize a botanical museum. In 1930 he started work at

Hungarian National Museum The Hungarian National Museum ( hu, Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum) was founded in 1802 and is the national museum for the history, art, and archaeology of Hungary, including areas not within Hungary's modern borders, such as Transylvania; it is not to ...

, where he curated the lichen collections. Gyelnik married Theresa Hofflinger on 30 May 1930, with whom he had a son in 1932. Gyelnik maintained a friendly correspondence with American amateur lichenologist Charles Christian Plitt for several years until Plitt's death in 1933. In the 1930s, it was common for Hungarians with non-Hungarian sounding names to alter them if they desired political appointments. Gyelnik prefixed Kőfaragó (meaning "stone-cutter") to his name in 1935, and eventually became the head of the Botanical Department of the museum in 1942. On March 15, 1945, Gyelnik was killed in Austria by

Allied An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...

bombing. Gyelnik published about 100 papers on lichens in the period 1926 to 1945, and proposed hundreds of new names, particularly in the genera '' Alectoria'', ''

Nephroma ''Nephroma'' is a genus of medium to large foliose lichens. The genus has a widespread distribution. They are sometimes called kidney lichens, named after the characteristic kidney-shaped apothecia that they produce on the lower surface of their ...

'', ''

Parmelia Parmelia may refer to: * Parmelia (barque), the vessel that in 1829 transported the first settlers of the British colony of Western Australia * ''Parmelia'' (fungus), a genus of lichens with global distribution * Parmelia, Western Australia Pa ...

'', and ''

Peltigera ''Peltigera'' is a genus of approximately 100 species of foliose lichens in the family Peltigeraceae. Commonly known as the dog or pelt lichens, species of ''Peltigera'' are often terricolous (growing on soil), but can also occur on moss, trees, ...

''. He described about 1300 new

taxa In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; plural taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular nam ...

, including 264 new species. His work, however, was not without detractors, who thought he published too hastily, and sometimes forgot what he had published earlier. According to

Mason Hale Mason Ellsworth Hale, Jr. (September 23, 1929 – April 23, 1990) was one of the most prolific lichenologists of the 20th century. Many of his scholarly articles focused on the taxonomy of the family Parmeliaceae. Hale was one of the first liche ...

, Gyelnik "infuriated or at least antagonized virtually every contemporary lichenologist". Ana Crespo and colleagues expressed a similar sentiment: "He was generally viewed as something of a nomenclatural terrorist by his contemporaries who were infuriated by the large numbers of novel taxa he described, most of which they could not accept, and an apparent slackness in how he worked". However, Hale also noted his deep understanding of the genus ''

Xanthoparmelia ''Xanthoparmelia'' (commonly known as green rock shields or rock-shield lichens) is a genus of foliose lichen in the family Parmeliaceae.Field Guide to California Lichens, Stephen Sharnoff, Yale University Press, 2014, ''Xanthoparmelia'' is syn ...

'' and suggested that he was ahead of his time for using

chemical tests A chemical substance is a form of matter having constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. Some references add that chemical substance cannot be separated into its constituent elements by physical separation methods, i.e., wit ...

and various morphological characters in devising his own classification system for European parmelioid lichens – some of which were used to define genera many decades later. Gyelnik is honoured in the name of the species '' Verrucaria gyelnikii'' , '' Polyblastia gyelnikiana'' , '' Thelidium gyelnikii'' , '' Parmelia gyelnikii'' , and '' Psorotichia gyelnikii'' .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kofarago-Gyelnik, Vilmos 1906 births 1945 deaths Budapest University alumni 20th-century Hungarian botanists Hungarian lichenologists Scientists from Budapest Hungarian civilians killed in World War II Deaths by airstrike during World War II

See also

References