Rolf Singer

Rolf Singer ( born June 23, 1906, in Schliersee, † January 18, 1994 in Chicago) was one of the most influential and prolific figures in the history of mycology of the 20th century. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Singer".

Biography

The son of the animal and genre painter Albert Singer attended elementary school and high school in Schliersee in Pasing, Munich and Amberg. He worked before graduating from high school with mushrooms and published in 1922 his first mycological works, including his 1923 first monographic study of Central European russulas. Singer studied at the University of Munich, where he obtained his diploma in chemistry. In 1928 he moved to the University of Vienna where he. Richard Wettstein as the last student with his second monographic treatment of the genus Russula as a dissertation for the Ph.D. received his doctorate. In Vienna, Singer was able to two Caucasus excursions of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna to participate whose results he documented in two major publications. In addition, Singer was involved on this occasion on the first ascent of the 4475 meter high Giultschi.

During the period of National Socialism, he emigrated to Barcelona, ​​where he was an assistant professor at the Autonomous University. On the initiative of the German government, he was persecuted by the Spanish authorities, and sat down to France in 1934 from. In Paris he was awarded a scholarship at the Muséum national d' histoire naturelle. He then worked from 1936 to 1941 in Leningrad as a scientist at the Botanical Garden of Academy of Sciences of the USSR. During this time he undertook numerous trips to Siberia, the Altai Mountains and to Karelia.

From 1941 onwards, followed by teaching and study in the United States. He spent seven years at Harvard on local Farlow Herbarium, first as a research assistant, then as deputy director and - after the death of David Linder - as director. During this time, Singer was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Florida and attended the University of Virginia on a teaching assignment.

Rolf Singer in 1948 left Harvard to accept in Argentina at the National University of Tucumán a professorship. In 1961 he became a professor at the University of Buenos Aires. She then studied abroad in Chile and Brazil. During his time in South America Singer amassed elaborate collections of fungi with his wife and daughter Heath.

In 1968, he received a call to the Field Museum of Natural History (abbreviated: Field Museum ), University of Illinois at Chicago, where he worked, interrupted by two research stays in Lausanne ( 1970-1971 ) and Manaus ( 1976-1978 ) until his retirement and remained the Museum until his death connected.

Work

Singers work continues to characterize the moderene taxonomy and systematics of higher Hymenomycetes. In his major work, The Agaricales in Modern Taxonomy, which has been repeatedly revised and updated, it is clear that Singer considered the genus as a taxonomic base unit and the species in the systematic analysis play a smaller role in his view. He himself has understood his work as a monograph of the genera and always protested against the approach to operate based on small regions taxonomy, as this would in his view result in a too starkten fragmentation of the genera. Consequently, he explored the fungal flora in as many countries and understood by a region a whole continent. He worked with his research trips an overview of the diversity of fungal genera, like no other before him mycologist.

Due to its own findings as well as the study of the present type material was able to describe him quite a number of new genera, where they were in the majority not to splinter the already described taxa. Singer has renamed 86 genera, among other things, describing 2460 species and sub- species from 222 genera.

In addition to the taxonomy Singer has also engaged much with the phylogeny of Hymenomycetes. So he had come to believe that the agarics can be derived from hypogean Gasteromycetes and many, mostly classified as Aphyllophorales forms evolved from leaves fungi, by their characteristic morphological features were reduced. He based his results inter alia on microscopic features and turned so that the hitherto widespread approach from to relate the relationship of the fungi on purely macroscopic characteristics.

Singer has also dealt with environmental aspects of mycology, even if these services in their scope were lower than those of the taxonomy and phylogeny. He has published significant work on ectotrophic mycorrhiza. Some of his more than 440 publications also deal with areas such as Ethnomycology and mushroom cultivation. Singers work has appeared in nine different languages.

Familial

His wife Martha ( Mimi ) copper (* December 15, 1910 in Vienna, † January 8, 2003 in Encinitas, California ), whom he had met while studying in Vienna, was a sculptor and supported the scientific research of her husband by making him accompanied on his numerous expeditions. She was until his death a volunteer at the Field Museum. From 1997 until her death she lived with her ​​daughter near San Diego.

Works

• Mushrooms and Truffles. Botany, Cultivation and Utilization, Koeltz Scientific Books. ISBN 3-87429-258-4