Manfred Adalbert Fischer

Manfred A. Fischer on an excursion to the Pischelsdorf meadows

Manfred Adalbert Fischer (born June 2, 1942 in Vienna ) is an Austrian botanist and plant systematist . Its official botanical author abbreviation is MA Fisch.

Life

Fischer was born in Vienna as the first child of Johann and Gertrud Fischer, née Zink, and grew up together with his one year younger sister Helga in Mauer in the south-west of Vienna. From 1948 to 1952 he attended elementary school in Mauer and then until 1960 the secondary school in Rosasgasse in Meidling . His father worked in Upper Austria in the post-war years and the family often spent their holidays on a farm near Kremsmünster . The direct contact with nature encouraged him to study the flora more intensively , and at the age of twelve he began to identify plants. Enthusiastic about the topic through the lectures given by the botanist Friedrich Ehrendorfer in Vienna's Urania , he took part in botanical excursions as a high school student. In 1960, Fischer enrolled at the University of Vienna . In 1961 he completed the teaching degree in shorthand and worked during his studies as a parliamentary stenographer in the National Council and in the Vienna City Council and Parliament . Fischer received his dissertation in 1967 from Ehrendorfer, officially on the board of the Botanical Institute Lothar Geitler , on the cytotaxonomy of the Veronica hederifolia species group. In the same year he also completed the teaching exams in natural history and philosophy. From 1967 to 1968 he worked as a research assistant and then as an assistant at the Botanical Institute of the University of Vienna. On August 28, 1968, he married his fellow student Gerlinde Zamec from Himmelberg in Carinthia, whom he had met in 1961.

As a result, Fischer intensively researched the genus speedwell ( Veronica ), especially those clans with an Eastern European , Mediterranean and Asian distribution area . In the course of this , he described a double-digit number of species and subspecies, including the Viennese Gamander Prize and the Hain Prize . Since 1972 he has been using the middle name Adalbert, mostly abbreviated to avoid confusion with other people of the same name.

From 1978 to 1982 senior assistant, Fischer completed his habilitation as a university lecturer in 1982 and finally became an associate professor for systematic botany in 1987. His main research interests are the clan systematics, botanical evolution research and the flora of Europe and especially Austria. In addition to his research areas, Fischer also teaches the subjects of plant morphology , vegetation ecology and useful plants . Over time, Fischer collected around 25,000 herbarium specimens . In 1994, together with Wolfgang Adler, Karl Oswald, Raimund Fischer and Otto Knab, Fischer published the excursion flora from Austria , the first plant identification book for the territory of the Republic of Austria since its foundation in 1918. In the period before that, florists had to deal with outdated works from the German Empire or be satisfied with German identification works, which do not completely cover the diverse Austrian flora, including the Pannonian in the east. In 2008 the excursion flora, now expanded to include Liechtenstein and South Tyrol, was published in the third edition and is considered a standard work. Fischer retired in 2007, but is still scientifically active. In addition to his work as an author of semi-popular and scientific articles and books, he continues to teach and organizes around twelve outdoor excursions for students and other interested parties every year. Among other things, Fischer is President of the Association for Research into the Flora of Austria and was editor of the botanical journal Neilreichia until 2015 .

Fonts

• Manfred Fischer: Contributions to the cytotaxonomy of the Veronica hederifolia group (Scrophulariaceae) , in: Österreichische Botanische Zeitschrift , 114, 189–233 (1967)
• Manfred A. Fischer, Karl Oswald, Wolfgang Adler: Excursion flora for Austria, Liechtenstein and South Tyrol . 3rd, improved edition. State of Upper Austria, Biology Center of the Upper Austrian State Museums, Linz 2008, ISBN 978-3-85474-187-9 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Franz Speta: Manfred A. Fischer - a sixties (with a detailed list of publications), in: Association for Research into Austria's Flora (ed.): Neilreichia , Vol. 2-3, 2003, ISSN  1681-5947 Online (PDF; 2.35 MB)
2. ↑ The Euro + Med PlantBase - the information resource for Euro-Mediterranean plant diversity, accessed on January 20, 2015
3. ↑ ORF interview with Fischer: "The fight against nature is in our blood", accessed on January 21, 2015
4. ↑ Excursion leaders at Naturschutzbund Lower Austria, accessed on January 20, 2015 ( Memento of the original from January 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ^ Association for Research into Austria's Flora: Minutes of the General Assembly of January 22nd, 2009 Online ( Memento of the original of December 8th, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 66 kB) 
6. ^ Association for Research into the Flora of Austria, accessed on January 20, 2015

Web links

• Author entry and list of the described plant names for Manfred Adalbert Fischer at the IPNI