Gunnar Degelius, born in Uppsala in 1903, is the Grand Old Man of Swedish, and indeed of World Lichenology. I presume that many of you are familiar with his work.

Degelius' thesis on oceanic lichens, defended in 1935, is a classic and typical of his approach to lichenology, with meticulous treatments of taxonomy, nomenclature and ecology. In 1936 Degelius' first paper on Collema appeared. It was a prelude to what became a life-long interest in the group. His outstanding monograph on this notoriously difficult genus in Europe appeared in 1954, and was followed by a revision of extra-European taxa twenty years later.

Floristic studies are another interest of Degelius. An early example is the flora of Angermanland from 1931, which was followed by similar surveys of Norra Skafton, Orno and other parts of Sweden as well as North America, Iceland, The Azores and more recently the islands of Vega and Anholt. Although Degelius is best known for his taxonomic and floristic studies, it should not be forgotten that he has also made important contributions to the ecology and biology of lichens. A peculiar type of diaspores, "lichenized hormocysts", is one of his discoveries. Most valuable are perhaps Degelius' two papers on the succession of lichens on twigs, using the yearly growth of the branches to date the settlement of lichens.

Generosity and encouragement, particularly to young lichenologists, is one of his characteristic features. His wide knowledge has inspired and assisted scientists in many countries. He has travelled widely and built up a large herbarium. His marvelous library is scarcely surpassed anywhere.

Over the years, Degelius has published about 120 papers, mostly on lichens. His first scientific study, on Arthonia spadicea, appeared in 1923. I know that he now has a manuscript on new Collema species in preparation, and that he plans to take up SEM-studies of Collema spores. The Acharius Medal is an adequate homage to an outstanding contribution to lichenology spanning seventy years. We wish him all the very best in his present and future endeavors.

--- Lars Arvidsson

Prof. Dharani Awasthi was educated at the University of Lucknow where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1947. From 1952 he lectured in Botany at Lucknow University. He also studied at the University of Colorado at Boulder and obtained his Ph.D. there in 1963.

Awasthi has long been interested in the lichens of his home country India and over the past 40 years has published many papers and monographs. His work on Dirinaria was a landmark. He has published a catalogue of Indian lichens and recently, comprehensive keys to Indian macrolichens and microlichens.

He has built up a comprehensive herbarium and encouraged many students in Indian lichens.

For his long and devoted service to the study of lichenology in India, I am very pleased to propose Dharani Awasthi as an Acharius medalist

--- Isao Yoshimura

Over the last three or four decades, the science of lichenology, or more specifically, the discipline of lichen systematics, has become increasingly identified with the use of secondary chemistry. For much of the same time period, the subject of this biographical sketch, Dr. Chicita F. Culberson, has been the leading lichen chemist, and much of our present knowledge base is a result of her work, or has been made accessible by her work.

Chicita Culberson (née Forman) was born on November 1, 1931 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After high school, Chicita made the crucial decision to attend the University of Cincinnati, where she majored in chemistry. It was here that she eventually met her future husband and collaborator, Bill Culberson, certainly a fortuitous event for lichenology. Chicita graduated with high honors from the University in 1953. Another milestone occurring that summer was her marriage to Bill.

After completing her undergraduate degree, Chicita enrolled in the University of Wisconsin where, in 1951 she obtained a Master's Degree in chemistry. Her dissertation dealt with the very non-lichenological topic of using radioactive tracers to study the physical and chemical processes involved in electrodeposition. After Wisconsin, there was a one-year hiatus in Chicita's formal education while she accompanied Bill on his postdoctoral appointment at the Farlow Reference Library and Herbarium in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As a chemist, Chicita first became interested in lichens through her association with Bill. Her first real work with lichens occurred while they were at Harvard, where Asahina's microchemical techniques were applied to the "Parmelia dubia" group. Significantly, it was also during this time that Chicita began the extensive bibliographic indexing work that eventually led to her landmark book, "A Chemical and Botanical Guide to Lichen Products."

In 1955, Chicita moved to North Carolina with Bill who had accepted a position at Duke University. There, she embarked on a doctoral program in Organic Chemistry where she did research on the synthesis and mechanism of reactions in terpenes related to camphor. Chicita received her Ph.D. degree in 1959, spent a couple of years as a Research Associate in the Chemistry Department, and since 1961 has been either a Senior Research Associate or an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Botany.

In a (still active) research career with so many highpoints and important publications, it is difficult to select out a few for special mention here in this brief synopsis. I believe that most lichenologists would agree, however, that two of Chicita's relatively early contributions have had a particularly outstanding impact on our own work and on the general advancement of knowledge in the areas of lichen chemistry and lichen chemosystematics. The first of these is her above-mentioned book, "A Chemical and Botanical Guide to Lichen Products" (and the supplements), a book which is packed with information on biosynthetic pathways, information about the different lichen substances, and listings of lichens from which they have been reported. Even though the most recent supplement came out some time ago now (a new supplement is in progress), these books represent an irreplaceable resource that is still used by many of us on an almost daily basis. The second very influential contribution is the series of papers begun in 1970 in which she explained her standardized techniques for the use of thin-layer chromatography in the identification of secondary lichen products. While the techniques first outlined by Chicita have been elaborated upon and computerized by other workers, the basic procedures used by most of us today remain those first described by her.

In addition to the above contributions, Chicita has published on a wide variety of topics relating to lichen chemistry and chemotaxonomy, and all of her nearly one hundred publications have been of consistently high quality. Special mention must be made of her work on cultured biont chemistry and resynthesis, chemosyndromic variation in lichens, chemical evolution, gene transfer and molecular biology. Chicita has done collaborative work with a large number of lichenologists and has given expert assistance to many more. Her number one collaborator of course is her husband Bill. Together, they have formed a partnership that has reaped great benefits for lichenology. At the risk of stretching a metaphor too far, it might be said that Chicita and Bill Culberson themselves provide an extraordinary example of a lichenological symbiosis. And, just as with lichens their symbiotic relationship provides a total that is more than sum of its parts.

T. L. Esslinger

When one thinks of modern, innovative work being done on the systematics and evolutionary biology of lichens, it is Dr. William Louis Culberson's name that immediately comes to mind. For almost four decades now, he has been at the forefront of the use of lichen chemistry to study and identify not just the results but also the processes of evolution in lichens.

Bill was born April 5, 1929 in Indianapolis, Indiana, but his family moved when he was a young boy to Cincinnati, Ohio, where his father was a postal worker and his mother a school teacher. He attended school in Cincinnati, and when it came time for college he enrolled at the University of Cincinnati. Bill had been interested in plants from a young age, worked in a greenhouse as a youth, and when the time came he selected Botany as a college major. It was at the University of Cincinnati that he was introduced to cryptograms by the bryologist Margaret Fulford, and he wrote his first scientific paper, a floristic account of some lichens of eastern Kentucky, while still an undergraduate. It was also in Cincinnati that Bill met his future wife and collaborator, Chicita Forman.

By the time he graduated (with High Honors and as a Phi Beta Kappa) in 1951, Bill had become fluent enough in French that he decided to go to the Universite de Paris to work on the equivalent of a Master's degree. Supported by a Fulbright Scholarship, he studied in the Laboratoire de Cryptogamie, where he wrote a dissertation on the systematics and phytogeography of Enterographa crassa. Returning to the States in 1952, Bill enrolled on a Ph.D. program in Botany at the University of Wisconsin, where he worked in a lichen ecology project under the direction of John Thomson. The research project, a study of the structure of corticolous lichen and bryophyte communities in the upland forests of northern Wisconsin, was a companion project to a similar one carried out in southern Wisconsin by Mason Hale, whose tenure as a graduate student, also with John Thomson, partially overlapped with that of Bill. It took Bill only two years to complete his doctoral program, and in 1954 he went as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow to work with Mackenzie Lamb at the Farlow Reference Library and Herbarium of Harvard University. He and Chicita, having married the previous year, spent one year at the Farlow, working primarily on the Parmelia dubia group.

In 1955, Bill was hired as an Instructor by Duke University, primarily to organize and teach in their general botany classes. At the time, the lichen herbarium at Duke was almost nonexistent, and it has since been built into a major botanical resource through extensive travel and collecting by Bill and Chicita, by exchange with other herbaria, and by the purchase of several European collections (the Havaas herbarium from Norway and part of the Harmand herbarium from France). Among the highlights in his professional career during his tenure at Duke are the following. He has been a member of the editorial boards of the journals Brittonia (1972 - 74), Madrono (1972 - 76) American Journal of Botany (1977-79), Cryptogamie, Bryologie et Lichenologie (1972 - present), and Cryptogamic Botany (1989 - present). He served as Editor-in-Chief of The Bryologist (1962 -1970), Brittonia (1975), and Systematic Botany (1976-77), and in fact Bill was largely responsible for the founding and start-up of the latter highly respected journal. He has served as President of the American Bryological and Lichenological Society of America (1987-89), and has just completed a year as the President of the Botanical Society of America, a distinguished post rarely achieved by a cryptogamic botanist, especially a systematist. As one would expect of such an accomplished scientist, he has climbed steadily through the academic ranks, and today Bill occupies the prestigious Hugo L. Blomquist Professorship in Botany at Duke University.

Bill is an innovative and productive researcher with more than a hundred quality papers to his credit, and this does not count the Recent Literature on Lichens bibliographic lists from The Bryologist, which he originated and compiled for more than twenty-five years (to a total of 100 lists). As compilations, this latter series of publications might not be regarded with the same status as his many original research papers, but from the viewpoint of service to the lichenological community, they do deserve special mention here. As with Chicita, Bill's contributions have always been of such consistently high quality, often on the cutting edge of our science, that selecting out a few for special mention is difficult. If measured by their direct usefulness to and impact upon other lichenologists, the Recent Literature series mentioned above and the four checklists of North American lichens he wrote with Mason Hale would certainly merit special mention. Also among his most significant early works is the Cetrelia and Platismatia monograph, completed with Chicita, which was one of the first comprehensive revisions to make use of detailed chemical data to support both specific and generic level taxonomies. He has spent a significant part of his career working to clarify the biological and evolutionary significance of chemical variation in lichens, and his best known works are probably of this type. Among especially important papers in this vein are those dealing with the Ramalina siliquosa group, the Parmelia perforata group, the Cladonia chlorophaea group, and Flavoparmelia caperala-F. baltimorensis.

--- T. L. Esslinger

The Acharius Medal is an award to lichenologists who carry on the tradition of Acharius with excellent work on lichens. There are, of course, many prominent lichenologists who would be eligible for this honor and whoever is chosen will receive this medal as a representative of all the great scientists who would deserve it. I would like to propose Prof. Dr. Aino Henssen and as her first graduate student I have the pleasure of giving a brief synopsis of her life and work.

However, I feel that a mere account of her curriculum vitae with information on her date and place of birth, her academic career, etc. is rather dull. You all know Aino as one of our most prominent lichenologists. You know that she retired last year from her professorial appointment and this implies that you know her age. You are quite familiar with the fact that she knows everything about fruit body development, about the little black lichens and about other things, such as Actinomycetes, as well.

Aino Henssen obtained her doctoral degree in Marburg in 1953 with a work on Lemnaceae, not on the taxonomy but on the physiology. I do not think that she liked this work that much. On our many field-trips I cannot remember that she ever so much as glanced at a single Lemna. In Marburg she had already become interested in cryptogams but she turned to her special field of interest during the following years when she worked in Finland, Sweden and Canada. She always told me that she became a lichenologist in Uppsala and it is perhaps fitting that she should receive this medal here in Sweden.

So this was the starting point of her many excellent publications but one has to do more to get a medal and to be honored by this international family of lichenologists. This "more" is best explained by some reminiscences from the time when I was a student in her research group.

At that time it was the practice that students of biology attended half-day fieldtrips every Saturday - looking at higher plants in Summer and cryptogams in Winter, the latter meaning mosses. At the beginning of one winter term it was announced that the field-trips would be given by a new member of staff, called Aino Henssen. As we had never come across the first name "Aino", we did not know that she was a woman, a not unusual mistake - as Aino likes to explain. Perhaps, with her permission, I may borrow one of her favorite stories. At that time she received a letter from the prominent Dutch lichenologist Maas-Geesteranus addressed to Herr Dr. Aino Henssen- In her reply she explained that Aino is a female Finnish first name, with the result that Maas Geesteranus said to his wife: "How strange, this Herr Doctor Henssen has a female Finnish first name". Retrospectively, we students may be forgiven for not knowing this either. It also shows that very few women were to be found at universities at the time and how difficult it must have been for her to become accepted.

Anyway, before the first field-trip, Aino was presented to us by Professor von Stosch. He told us that she would introduce us to the lichens. Nobody had any idea what a lichen looked like as there are not too many lichens in Germany. Aino had with her a large basket from which she took all the tools necessary for hunting lichens - a hammer and chisel, a saw and two very large knives. From that we concluded that lichens could possibly be dangerous.

Let me be serious: it took only two or three excursions to get everyone more than interested. The enthusiasm shown by Aino infected all of us and we enjoyed these field-trips more than any other we had followed; and perhaps not surprisingly, we did learn a great deal. At the end of the term I asked her about studying with her. I feel that it is this enthusiasm for lichenology and the ability to transmit it to others which is one of Aino's outstanding characteristics and it is precisely this enthusiasm which makes her a deserving recipient of the medal.

For all those who do not only want anecdotes - here are some facts: 1925 - born in Elberfeld, Germany; 1953 - Doctoral degree at Marburg University; 1953-54 Institut für Obstbau, Universität Bonn; 1954-56 - Institut für Bakteriologie Berlin (first studies on Actinomycetes); 1956 - Botanical Institute, Helsinki; 1957-61 Scholarship from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Helene Lange Stiftung (work on lichens in Uppsala and Marburg); 1961-63 - Scholarship from the American Association of University Women and the Canadian Government (work in USA and Canada); 1963 - Curator (for cryptogams), Botanisches Institut Marburg; 1965 - Habilitation in Systematic Botany; 1970 - Professor in Marburg; 1990 - Retirement. Aino Henssen has published 100 scientific papers and books and collected about 60,000 specimens of lichens for her herbarium.

--- H. M. Jahns

Professor Otto Ludwig Lange is a lichenologist through and through - although most of his lichenological work is embedded in his general research interest: ecology and ecophysiology of plants.

Lange was born on the 21st of August 1927 in Dortmund. He studied Biology, Chemistry and Physics in Freiburg and Göttingen and was first qualified for a secondary school teachers' profession. In the same year (1952) he achieved the promotion as a Dr. rer. nat. at the University of Göttingen, where he was granted his habilitation in 1959. After being a scientific assistant of Prof. Franz Firbas at Göttingen from 1953 to 1961, Lange was docent at the botanical institute of the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt for 2 years. In 1963, he accepted the Chair of Forest Botany in the Forestry Faculty of the University of Göttingen at Hannoversch Münden. In 1967 he went to the University of Würzburg and founded there the Lehrstuhl Botanik II. He resisted offers of distinguished chairs at the Universities of Grenoble, Stuttgart-Hohenheim, Tübingen and Göttingen.

Lange's interest in lichens was aroused after he met the well-known amateur lichenologist Oskar Klement. Since the late forties Lange started collecting lichens and built up his lichen herbarium. One of his early highlights was the discovery and description of Gonohymenia mauretanica (1958), a result of his ecological studies in the Mauretanian desert carried out with Professor Otto Stocker.

Lange can be considered as one of the first who laid the basis for our modem understanding of functions and adaptations of lichens in their habitats. He began his academic career with an investigation of the heat and drought tolerance of lichens and their relations to habitat conditions. His dissertation, published in Flora (1953), is still a well-cited publication. At first his studies were dedicated to the lichen responses to extreme temperatures and drought and investigations of the heavy metal content in lichens. Later he investigated the CO2 exchange in lichens and the influence of major environmental parameters. Lange always used the highest technical standards for his instrumentation and stimulated application of new technical developments. His lichenological work received great attention from botanists in general.

Lange and his coworkers made several key discoveries for lichen physiology and ecology, for instance with respect to the water relations of this poikilohydrously living symbiosis. It was discovered that lichens are able to take up water vapour from the air (first published in 1965 in Naturwissenschaften). Many of his studies were devoted to this phenomenon in the laboratory and in the field, particularly in deserts (Namib, Negev, Chilean little North, Antarctic cold desert). Lange's studies on Ramalina maciformis and other species from the Negev desert in Israel became especially famous. Another milestone was the discovery that cyanolichens differ from green algae-lichens in that they cannot become photosynthetically activated by water vapor uptake (1985). Lange and coworkers also clarified the question whether and how many lichens reveal a reduced CO2 uptake at superoptimal thallus water contents (1980). Elegantly conducted studies and sophisticated theoretical considerations were recently dedicated to the problem of a swelling-imposed reduction of net photosynthesis. He is also studying rainforest lichens of which our present knowledge is very poor. A lot of unexpected phenomena will come to light through these studies, as already, for instance, the discovery that rainforest lichens from New Zealand can be extremely sensitive to desiccation, and that their water relations are different from what we generally know about lichens. About 80 publications, about 27% of his whole oeuvre, are devoted to lichen research. And now, after his retirement, he intends to strengthen his interest in this subject.

Lange has been highly decorated with many honors. He received several orders, medals and prizes, and is a member of several Academies, including the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (since 1976), the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen (1978), and the Academia Scientiarum et Artium Europaea in Salzburg (1991). He was decorated with the Verdienstkreuz erste Klasse des Verdienstordens der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (1981), and the Bayerische Maximilian Orden far Wissenschaften und Kunst (1991). He was awarded the Förderpreis for German scientists within the G.W. Leibniz Programme of the German Science Foundation, the Balzan Award of Israel for applied botany and ecology (1988) and the Adalbert-Seifritz Award for Technology Transfer (1990). He is an honorary member of the Regensburger Botanische Gesellschaft and of the British Lichen Society.

Otto Lange and his laboratory are most attractive to colleagues and lichenologists everywhere in the world. He is not only admired as an excellent, never failing experimentalist and scientist. He is also well known for his welcoming and delightful personality. Thus, he made his lab in Wurzburg a Mecca for ecophysiologists and all other lichen researchers. I think many of us owe him the deepest gratitude for stimulating discussions, fair and fruitful cooperation, teaching and many kinds of help and support, so that it is self-evident to propose Otto L. Lange to be awarded by the Acharius Medal.

--- Ludger Kappen

The Acharius Medal is given "as an award in recognition of long and distinguished service to lichenology". Let us consider the three words: "long", "distinguished" and "service".

There are several aspects of Josef Poelt's SERVICE to lichenology. (1) First of course his advancing of our knowledge in lichenology - his participation in scientific research - led to a large number of publications, a most well known activity; however there are other, less obvious, but often very time-consuming types of service: (2) his service as an editor or coeditor of botanical and lichenological journals; (3) his service as an authority for a very large number of lichenologists, who have sent their problematic collections to him, for his study and opinions; (4) his service in reviewing manuscripts sent to him (a) by many authors, asking for critical comments, (b) by the editing boards of journals, (c) by various science supporting organizations, such as "deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft", in connection with reviewing research grants, (d) by universities, asking for his expert opinion for various reasons; and (5) - last but not least - his service for the continuity of lichenological research - teaching and guiding students, both at universities and outside of the university.

Josef's "LONG service to lichenology". Research. It was in 1950 when Josef published a paper entitled "Contributions to the lichen flora of Bavaria". This was the first in a series of now more than 200 lichenological publications. Publications on floristics, taxonomy, morphology, evolution and biology of lichens. His Bestimmungsschlüssel europäischer Flechten is probably his most widely used publication. This collection of keys has long been a key reference work for students and professionals. Of course, since it was published only in German, it has been officially available only to speakers of that language; but I understand that some non-German speakers may be fortunate enough to have an unofficial translation from "Xerox Press".

There are many outstanding monographical papers - for example those on the Lecanoraceae (18 papers), the Physciaceae (11 papers), the Teloschistaceae (15 papers) and various other taxa. Josef is not the type of scientist who devotes all of his years to the monographic study of a single taxonomic group. He has recognized too many weak points in too many areas of our knowledge and he has thus continually pushed our knowledge of lichens to new frontiers.

Teaching, since achieving his "Habilitation" in 1959 (effectively his tenure), Josef has been a university lecturer. Although now retired, he continues to teach at the University of Graz. During these past 33 years, he shared his extensive knowledge of lichenology in guiding numerous students through their studies and advised many of them in their doctoral degrees. Some of his students in turn also became university lecturers, and so his "scientific family" is growing ever larger. In the meantime Josef has become a multiple scholastic "grandfather" and even a "greatgrandfather". Most of you know Josef's responsibility, helpfulness, cordiality and hospitality well enough, so that I do not have to stress here, that he always behaved to his large family like a father, a father in the very best sense!

Josef's "DISTINGUISHED service to lichenology". Instead of giving a critical commentary I will cite here just a few of the honors which Josef has received, based upon his outstanding service to science: - In 1965 he received the chair in Systematic Botany and Plant Geography at the Free University of Berlin; - later, in 1972, he received the chair in Systematic Botany at the University of Graz; in 1982 he was elected as a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences; - he has been elected as an Honorary Member of a number of distinguished botanical societies, including the Regensburg Botanical Society, the worlds oldest botanical society; - the Linnean Society in London elected him as a Foreign Member, which is an honor reserved for very distinguished scientists; - the Botanical Society of America has elected him as a Corresponding Member, which is also an honorary membership; - and most recently, as you know, Josef was the President of the 4th International Mycological Congress in Regensburg.

Most remarkable - and obvious to all who ever shared one of Josef's excursions - is his extremely broad background in plant systematics in general and in floristics. Besides his 200 lichenological papers, there are an additional 100 papers on bryophytes, non-lichenized fungi and vascular plants.

It is not appropriate to deal here with his extra-lichenological activities, but it is obvious the Josef is more than a lichenologist, he is an accomplished botanist with an immense knowledge of lichens.

Biological aspects, the correlations between structure and function, and the evolutionary trends, have always guided Josef's research in lichen systematics. The parasitic lichens are a typical example of his interest. Josef has devoted some twenty papers to this subject. Before he started, "parasitic lichens" were regarded as a very small and very rare group of lichens, and remained almost completely devoid of general attention. Josef has not only discovered numerous new taxa, but has analyzed and clarified the very diverse and fascinating biological behavior of quite a number of these exciting organisms.

To sum up. - Josef has substantially shaped the lichenological landscape of Europe during the last decades. His contribution to our knowledge of European lichens can hardly be overestimated. We all are happy to see the Acharius Medal presented to him.

--- Hannes Hertel

Professor Rolf Santesson began his lichenological studies as a schoolboy and the field work for one of his first papers, amphibious pyrenolichens, started in 1934. He was then only 18 years old. As teachers he had G. Einar Du Rietz, later Professor of Plant Ecology but also known as a lichen taxonomist, and Prof. Gunnar Degelius who will simultaneously be presented with the Acharius Award. Rolf Santesson often tells us that his first flora was Josef Anders' Die Strauch- und Laubflechten Mitteleuropas from 1928, to remind us about the advantage we have to be able to use another Josef's flora, Bestimmungsschlüssel europäischer Flechten.

In 1939, Rolf Santesson went to the southernmost region of South America on a planned 8 month expedition. Because of the second world war the expedition lasted almost two years. His companion was a zoologist, Claes Olrog, who published a book on the expedition. It is written in Swedish and gives a good account of the nature and people 50 years ago. For those of you who have recently been in Tierra del Fuego it will pay to study this book, even if you have to struggle with the Swedish language.

From the beginning Rolf Santesson was mainly an ecologist with strong taxonomical interests. After the South American trip he turned to mainly taxonomic treatments of the material he had collected there, resulting in the revision of several genera. His work on Menegazzia for example was an important and basic landmark in South American lichenology. This work was carried out at the Natural History Museum in Stockholm but in 1946 he left Stockholm for Uppsala to start his work on foliicolous lichens. In 1952 he published his magnum opus, Foliicolous lichens I, which I suppose most of you have consulted more than once. This seminal work helped lay the foundation of modern lichen taxonomy in its application to lichens of Nannfeldt's new system for ascomycetes.

Teaching, curating work and supervision took most of Rolf Santesson's time after that and in 1973 he became professor and head of the Botanical Section of the Natural History Museum in Stockholm. He was successful in splitting the position into two, and cryptogamy got the first permanent position in Sweden; the Cryptogamic Botany Department with Rolf Santesson as the head, parallel with the Phanerogamic Botany Department. In 1982, he retired and since then we have had the privilege to see him at the Botanical Museum in Uppsala every day working as hard as ever on projects like the lichen parasites and his new edition of Lichens of Sweden and Norway which we soon hope to see.

As a teacher Rolf Santesson is one of the best. No problem is too small to interest him. I think many of us have gained from his generosity both concerning taxonomical problems and questions about literature and nomenclature and we know that many of you do the same in letters. A very common expression among us in Uppsala is, "Ask Rolf."

Those of us who have had the privilege to be with Rolf Santesson in the field know that he also has an outstanding floristic knowledge and is a master collector; the Uppsala herbarium is a good proof of that.

Rolf Santesson has definitely followed in the footsteps of Acharius, and has increased our knowledge of lichens considerably. Acharius himself would probably be very surprised to see the progress in lichenology, and would certainly agree that a worthier candidate for the Acharius Medal Award is difficult to find.

--- Roland Moberg

For 50 years, North American lichenology and the name, John W. Thomson, have been almost synonymous. Starting modestly with treatments of Cladonia and Peltigera for his home state of Wisconsin in America's midwest, John Thomson has steadily built up his knowledge of the lichens of North America, and shared that knowledge through his many articles, monographs and books, now numbering close to 100.

Although John Thomson is as American a lichenologist as anyone can imagine, one may find it surprising that Grummann's book of biographies includes John among the lichenologists of Great Britain. John was, in fact, born in Cockenzie, Scotland, but you won't find a trace of Scottish in his accent, long since lost after arriving in North America as a youngster. John earned his bachelor's degree in 1935 from Columbia University, and then went to Wisconsin for his master's and doctoral degrees, the latter being conferred in 1939.

Lichenologists in North America sometimes feel a bit lonely ... after all, there are more people working on lichens in Lund, for example, than in all of Canada... but try to imagine what it must have been like back in 1935 when John began his studies of lichens, or in 1944, when he took up a position in the Botany Department at the University of Wisconsin (a position he retained, by the way, until his retirement in 1987). There was only A.W.C.T. Herre, Carol Dodge, Alexander Evans, and perhaps a few others. Even Raymond Torrey, an early correspondent of John's, passed away in 1938. Impressed more by the opportunities to make real progress than discouraged by the lack of colleagues on the continent, John taught himself every kind of lichen from the smallest crust to the leafiest Peltigera. With John fast becoming known as the expert on lichens, he was naturally deluged with specimens for identification, sent to him for the most part by ecologists, naturalists and amateurs. I think it is fair to say that without his invaluable help during that period, lichens would have been virtually forgotten as an element of the North American flora. And he is still providing this service. The more lichens he named, of course, the more he got, and as a result, John has built the University of Wisconsin lichen herbarium into one of the largest and most important lichen collections on the continent.

John's impact on North American lichenology can be seen in the number of North American monographs and revisions he has produced over the years: Peltigera, Cladonia, Physcia in the broad sense, Baeomyces, Rhizocarpon, Dactylina, Catapyrenium, and, most recently, Staurothele. His monographs and shorter papers often include detailed dot maps showing the North American distributions of the lichens, and these have been enormously helpful to anyone interested in the phytogeography of American species.

To a significant extent, our floristic knowledge of American lichens has been built upon John Thomson's many authoritative reports of the lichens collected on the yearly forays of the American Bryological and Lichenological Society, often providing the first and, in some cases, still our only knowledge of the lichens in some parts of the continent. These reports cover areas in Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, northern Minnesota, California, Indiana, the Adirondacks of New York, and Washington. Some of the larger collections sent to him for determination, especially by the Canadian ecologist George Scotter, led to other significant floristic papers.

Beginning in the mid-50s, John contributed tremendously to our knowledge of the lichens of the American arctic, first dealing with the Hudson Bay region and the Canadian Eastern Arctic; and later, treating the lichens collected on numerous northern expeditions. This interest grew as John found opportunities to go north himself and sample firsthand the lichenological riches of that still underexplored land. These collecting trips have resulted in landmark books, first his lichen flora of the Alaskan Arctic Slope, and then an award-winning volume on the macrolichens of the entire American Arctic. We all await anxiously the appearance of the second volume, on the crustose species, due to be published next year.

John Thomson has been a teacher all his life, and has influenced a large number of people with his enthusiasm for lichens, as well as his warmth and generosity. He is always happy to share his knowledge with amateurs and professionals alike. Among his many students were Mason Hale and Bill Culberson who, themselves, have made a significant impact on North American lichenology. We all owe a great deal to John Thomson, and it is very fitting that he is among the first to receive an Acharius Medal.

--- Irwin M. Brodo

Professor Hans Trass is from one of the newest independent states of the world, namely Estonia. He is a distinguished lichenologist and botanist, having competence in many different field-. He was born in 1928 and studied at Tartu University. His candidate's thesis - which in the Soviet system actually corresponded to a doctoral thesis in most countries - was completed in 1955, and dealt with the fen flora and vegetation of western Estonia. He had already been the head of the Department of Plant Systematics and Geobotany of the Tartu University for more than ten years when, in 1969, he finished his official Doctor's thesis, entitled "The analysis of the Estonian lichen flora". In 1971 he became a Professor, and although he recently retired from his position as a head of the department, he is still continuing his work.

Besides his Ph.D. thesis Hans has published numerous other papers on lichens from 1956 on. Nevertheless, for much of the time lichenology has been just a sideline for him. He was often engaged in studies of vegetation ecology, publishing in 1976, for instance, a major book: Vegetation science: history and contemporary trends of development, originally published in Russian. In 1973 he wrote a major article on vegetation classification in Handbook of Vegetation Science edited by R.H. Whittaker. He studied the lichen flora of Estonia, but also led expeditions to remote areas of Russia, such as the Murmansk Region, Kamchatka, Sikhote-Alin Range and other areas in the Far East, Lake Baikal and Taymir Peninsula in Siberia, Kazakhstan and the Caucasus Mts. He especially promoted the study of lichens as pollution monitors, e.g. in 1968 with a paper entitled "An index for the utilization of lichen groups to determine air pollution". He developed his own Index of Poleotolerance (IP) based on lichens, and several students of his are continuing the work, for instance Kristjan Zobel, who completed his Ph.D. thesis under Trass this year. Hans also contributed to the Handbook of the lichens of the USSR by publishing the accounts of three families in it.

In addition, Hans has always kept numerous direct contacts with lichenologists all over the world, also travelling and working abroad, for instance, Canada, Germany, Sweden and Finland. He maintained good relations with Russian and western lichenologists, often acting as a bridge of knowledge between them, to the benefit of lichenology. He was known for his excellent lichen library and to Russian students was regarded as a "western professor".

To honor his lichenological research, his effective teaching, which has produced numerous lichenologists in Estonia and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, and for his most useful activities in promoting international cooperation in lichenology, it is appropriate that he receives an Acharius Medal.

--- Teuvo Ahti

The life of A. Vezda (born 1920 in Brno, Czechoslovakia) was strongly influenced by political troubles. During the first world war, he was not allowed to go to university and had to act as a manager of a fruit company. In 1945 he began his academic studies at the University of Brno. Later he changed to the University of Forestry. He finished his studies with the doctoral diploma and became an assistant. Already he had a strong interest in plants, especially those of small dimensions. The decision to study lichens and not bryophytes was made because some younger botanists in Czechoslovakia already had begun to work with bryophytes. Antonin first undertook floristic studies within the country, some with a strong ecological emphasis. However, he soon became interested in taxonomy. He began with monographical studies of groups which were, at that time, united within the artificial family Gyalectaceae.

In 1960 he was suddenly expelled from the University, because he was not a communist, and he had to act as a forest worker until 1968. Even during this time he tried, whenever possible, to follow his scientific interests. For example, he discovered and diligently analyzed the lichen which later became the type species of the genus Vezdaea, dedicated to him.

From 1968, when he had already published many papers which made him well known in the lichenological world, he became a worker at the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences at Prague, and he was allowed to do his work in his apartment in Brno.

In the following years Antonin published many outstanding lichenological papers. He contributed in a second essential field to the growth of lichenology. Already in his first years, he had published his "Lichenes Cechoslovakiae exsiccati", most of which he had collected himself in his own country. Later he initiated what became the largest lichen exsiccati ever to appear: his famous "Lichenes selecti exsiccati", with altogether 2500 numbers originating from many parts of the world. Fortunate is the institute which possesses a set!

Through his exsiccata, he became acquainted with lichens from the whole world. It is no wonder that he became interested in travelling outside his own country and some surrounding regions, which he was allowed to visit a few times. But only some parts of the (former) Soviet Union were open to him to visit and to do lichenological work. For several reasons he selected the Caucasus mountains, and especially the very humid southwestern slopes, well known formerly as Colchis. Here he became acquainted with a very special group of lichens, which continue to fascinate him today: the foliicolous lichens, treated by R. Santesson 1952 in a worldwide monograph. Antonin studied his own collections and received other material from different subtropical and tropical countries, sent by his many friends. Following the changing taxonomic concepts of our time, he described both many new species and new genera. But his most important contribution was understanding and analyzing the very peculiar organs for asexual reproduction that are formed in these lichens, hyphophores and campylidia. As he had done in his previous monographs, he illustrated his studies with his outstanding, perfect drawings, unique in modern lichenology. And his work goes on, many new taxa wait to be described by him.

When Antonin ended his "Lichenes selecti exsiccati", he first decided to stop assembling exsiccata altogether. But making exsiccata had become a part of his life. He started with a third series "Lichenes rariores exsiccati", though with a smaller number of sets. Several times on excursions, he had made up his mind to collect nothing for his exsiccata. But when he saw the first interesting species in sufficient quantity and he could not resist: "I must take it", he said, and soon another number was collected.

Antonin Vezda made essential contributions to modern lichenology: by his taxonomic monographs, by his exsiccata, by his unsurpassed drawings, and by his studies of foliicolous lichens. But he always had another botanical interest as well, bulbous plants, which he cultivated in his own garden near Brno. He received material from many parts of the world, and grew those plants from seed to flower and seed again. Sometimes this field of botany fascinated him even more than the lichens. Fortunately the flowering season of bulbous plants is usually very short and the garden work with propagation did not take up too much time, so lichenology remained his main field, in which his outstanding contributions made him a convincing candidate for the Acharius medal.

---J. Poelt

"Last but by no means least" - indeed, Peter was the first President of the IAL, and its Acting Treasurer, from 1969 to 1975. Further back in time he was another "first" - a founder member of the British Lichen Society in 1958. In that same year, following National Service, Peter began work as a lichenologist at the British Museum (Natural History). Also in that year, he became the first editor of The Lichenologist, continuing into the 1970s, and taking the journal from its humble beginnings to it becoming the leading international professional journal that it is today.

Editing in those days was much more difficult than today - there were fewer referees available and no such luxuries as word processors and desk-top publishers. He gave tremendous help to many authors, with regard to both scientific content, and to English correction, and he often "burnt the midnight oil" retyping manuscripts. Further evidence of Peter's contribution to lichenology can be seen by turning to the Acknowledgements of hundreds of papers by dozens of authors. I know that many of us here are personally grateful for the help and encouragement that Peter has given so freely.

Many of Peter's publications are landmarks in the recent history of lichenology. Of his earlier works are his "New checklist of British Lichens" (1965) and his major contribution to Ursula Duncan's Introduction to British Lichens (1970) - both were a major stimulus to lichen taxonomy and field-studies in NW Europe. Other landmarks include, for example, his paper on cephalodia (with Aino Henssen, 1976), the preliminary prospectus of lichen communities in the British Isles (with David Hawksworth and Francis Rose, 1977), and the monographs on Nephroma (with Joy White, 1987, 1988). Next to come are the publication of his studies on Menegazzia, and the appearance, in November 1992, of the long-awaited Lichen Flora of Great Britain and Ireland, of which Peter has been coeditor and a senior contributor.

Peter is primarily a taxonomist, but his enthusiasm for field-work, and his vast field experience in most parts of the world, have led to his involvement in much wider areas of lichenology, including ecology, phytosociolgy, pollution studies and conservation. He has always been a patient yet effective teacher, not only to the several doctoral students that have come under his wing, but also to the scores of amateurs who have benefited from his knowledge and enthusiasm during his many field courses and workshops at home and abroad.

On behalf of us here today, and of Peter's many other lichenological friends throughout the world, it is a great pleasure and honor for me to propose the award of the Acharius Medal to Peter James, a Gentleman of Lichenology.

--- Brian Coppins

Last but no means least, as Brian Coppins said when he introduced Peter James two years ago, which is indeed also true for this fourth candidate. Born in the US 1935, a New Yorker he, studied at Columbia University and Cornell University in Ithaca, where he received his masters degree. He then went on to Michigan State University in 1959 to work on a Ph.D. in lichenology with Henry Imshaug. It is probably clear to most of you that I am talking about Ernie Brodo or Irwin M. Brodo, as official letters are usually signed. Since 1965 Ernie has been employed at the National Museum of Canada in Ottawa as curator of the lichen collections, which he indeed has kept very well, having worked there and seen the well-organized collections myself in the summer of 1976.

Ernie has a very broad knowledge of lichenology and he has published extensively on various fields such as lichen chemistry, systematics, air pollution and more popular articles on general lichenology. Some of his publications are well known in the lichenological literature: his printed doctoral thesis The Lichens of Long Island, New York, a vegetational and floristic analysis from 1968; Alectoria and allied genera in North America from 1977 together with David Hawksworth and a splendid monographic treatment of the alectorioid lichens and something of a model for many modern monographic treatments to be published in years to come; Lichens of the Ottawa Region published in two editions 1981 and 1988 and papers like The North American species of the Lecanora subfusca group published in 1984.

Apart from scientific papers, Ernie also had time to publish numerous editorial notes during the exciting time when the IAL Newsletter started from 1967 through 1981, first as co-editor until 1975 and then as editor for a second term until Martin Dibben took over the editorship after the Sidney Congress.

His main interest, however, falls within the field of floristics and systematics of Canadian lichens, where he has published on many difficult groups such as Coccotrema, Ochrolechia, Rhizocarpon and Haematomma. In connection with this interest, he has also distributed his Lichenes Canadenses Exsiccati in several fascicles attached by very detailed publications. Ernie once told me that he could travel almost anywhere with support of the government, but only in Canada. But Canada is a large country, mainly covered by taiga and arctic tundra rich in lichen communities. His lichenological Shangri La is located there on the Pacific West coast, in the remote archipelago of the Queen Charlotte Islands. There he has found most of his exciting discoveries hidden in dense coniferous forests and soaked by oceanic mists. On every occasion I have met with Ernie I have heard about this place, always. In 1972, when I first met him, he proudly showed his Queen Charlotte room all filled with specimens and collections from floor to ceiling. Now, after his recent sabbatical in Finland and Sweden, we all hope to see this work, to which he has devoted so much of his time over more than two decades, completed. I know, however, that another more time-consuming project, a field guide of North American lichens, has slipped through in his tight agenda. This will, of course, also be a welcome book.

Ernie Brodo is congratulated by the IAL council for what he has achieved on the systematics of lichens on the North American continent.

Ingvar Kärnefelt (19 August 1994)

Dr. Syo Kurokawa was born in Toyama, Japan in 1926. He studied botany at the Tokyo University of Literature and Science, which granted him a PhD degree in 1961. In 1954, he became a researcher at the Research Institute of Natural Resources, of which the late Dr. Yasuhiko Asahina was director at that time. From 1962, he was a curator at the Division of Cryptogams, National Science Museum, Tokyo. In 1969, he was appointed as senior curator of the same division, and in 1974, as Director of the Botany Department. From 1983 to 1991, he was director of the Tsukuba Botanical Garden, a part of the National Science Museum. After his retirement from the National Science Museum he has served as director of the Botanical Garden of Toyama.

Dr. Kurokawa has been interested in lichens worldwide, and over the past 40 years has published many papers and monographs. The first paper was published together with Dr. Y. Asahina in 1952. Dr. Kurokawa is a particularly outstanding person among the many excellent lichenologists who have rendered contributions to the taxonomy of Anaptychia and Parmelia. He published a world monograph of the genus Anaptychia in 1962, proposed a new taxonomic system of Parmelia sens. lat. with the late Dr. Mason E. Hale in 1964. and described many new species of Parmelia.

Dr. Kurokawa has built up a lichen herbarium at the National Science Museum, Tokyo, which is now among the largest and best preserved herbaria in the world. He has made many lichenological field trips not only in Japan but also in many places over the world, e.g. North America, Brazil, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Thailand, Formosa, etc. He published an excellent exsiccata series from the National Science Museum, which contains 700 numbers. Dr. Kurokawa has encouraged many students in Japan. In 1972, he established the Lichenological Society of Japan for the promotion of lichen research and the distribution of valuable lichenological publications. On behalf of the Japanese lichenologists and as a colleague, I would like to offer Dr. Kurokawa words of admiration for an Acharius medalist. It is sincerely hoped that Dr. Kurokawa will continue to play an active role in lichenology in the coming years.

H. Kashiwadani (19 August 1994)

It is a great pleasure and honour for me to support the award of the Acharius Medal to Professor Elisabeth Tschermak-Woess. There is no question that she deserves this honour, particularly when one considers that she is not really a lichenologist at all. Elisabeth Tschermak-Woess started her scientific career with work on algae, while many of her later publications concern cytological problems in higher plants. She demonstrated, for example, the presence of structural heterozygosity to a surprising extent in natural Allium populations. Together with her co-workers she described the occurrence of polytene chromosomes in plants for the first time. To that date such "giant" chromosomes were believed to occur only in animals.

When she started her cytological work after the war, she had already published papers on the systematics and reproduction of algae and later she returned to this field. The photobionts of lichens were largely ignored by lichenologists or, at best, a typical lichenologist knows four or five different types of algae and the names of these genera are used for anything observed in the thallus. In contrast to this rather superficial classification Elisabeth Tschermak-Woess isolated and cultured all the different photobionts with great care and reported on their diversity in lichens. She was the first to discover a member of the Xanthophyceae in lichens and was able to demonstrate a symbiontic contact of a mycobiont with Chlorella. She described numerous additional genera as photobionts and her work really needs to be recommended and is to be highly appreciated for this treatment of the algae.

One of the well-known problems in lichen reproduction is the relichenization of fungi with Trebouxia. Elisabeth Tschermak-Woess was able to show that these algae may be rare in an unlichenized state but that free-living Trebouxia do occur. Perhaps even more important to lichenology were her investigations on the contacts between algae and fungi in lichens. Only in recent years has this aspect of symbiosis been fully appreciated by lichenologists and many of the recent publications omit to acknowledge the fact that the basic observations were made by her. Her exact descriptions of the different types of haustoria were certainly key discoveries in this field. She demonstrated the difference between intracellular and intramembranaceous haustoria and recognized intracellular haustoria as phylogenetically primitive. The taxonomic relevance of haustoria and the influence of exogenous factors on contact between the bionts were described by her for the first time. The most important results in this field were published as early as 1941 in her dissertation. With the light microscope she observed nearly all the details which were confirmed later with the electron microscope.

Elisabeth Tschermak-Woess has published more than one hundred scientific papers. For many years she has been in charge of the reviews on morphology and development of the cell published in "Progress in Botany". But it is not only the number and quality of these publications, it is above all the broad range of her scientific research that is so impressive.

I have only met Elisabeth Tschermak-Woess twice at congresses but she impressed me very much by her friendly and warm-hearted manner. I would very much like to get to know her better. Perhaps that will still be possible as she is still scientifically active, even though she is now 77 years old. It would have been nice to present her personally with this medal today. Hopefully all of us will be able to give her our personal and cordial congratulations at the next IAL meeting in two years when it will be held in Salzburg.

Sieglinde Ott (19 August 1994)