L. Forró szerk.: Miscellanea Zoologica Hungarica 9. 1994 (Budapest, 1994)

Forró, L.; Horváth, Cs.: In memoriam Jolán R. Stiller

MISCELLANEA ZOOLOGICA HUNGARICA Tomus 9. 1994 p. 5-11 In memóriám Jolán R. Stiller by L. Forró and Cs. Horváth (Received July 18, 1994) Jolán R. Stiller was born on the 26th March, 1898 in Borosjenő, then Arad county, now in Romania. She was brought up in Zagreb, where she finished her secondary school. After the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy the family took up residence in Hungary. Her father, Győző Stiller, was a well-known entomologist and explorer of caves. Jolán Stiller accompanied her father on his collecting tours from her early childhood, and these events enhanced her affection towards nature, and also aroused her scientific interest. In the fall of 1927 she started her higher education at the Ferencz József University in Szeged, and received an honours degree in natural history, geography and education. She also took her summa cum laude doctor's degree in zoology. Professor József Gelei, the head of General and Comparative Anatomy, asked the then student Stiller to study hydrobiology and the taxonomy of the peritrichid Ciliates. After she had collected the literature, she started her investigations on the taxonomy, and beside the ecology of the habitats of peritrichids. She studied the life style of these species, too, and also their tolerance and adaptability towards the physical and chemical changes of water. From 1930 during the summer holidays she regularly worked in the Biological Research Institute at Tihany, where she was appointed an outside worker. She was supported in the taxonomical studies on Peritricha by Géza Entz junior, and learned the identification of algae under the guidance of Aladár Scherffel. She wrote here doctoral thesis on the research she carried out at Tihany. She started to work in the Institute of Public Health at the Department of Pathohistology and Parasitology. Within the framework of biological water analysis she had to elaborate the methodology of microscopic water analysis and also had to organise this work. Her laboratory investigations were mainly focused on drinking water obtained from village dug-wells. In 1934 she was asked to work out the first biological drinking water standard. Until September 1936 she examined samples from approximately 1000 wells and pipes, and several sewage water samples. Among these investigations the one carried out on a typhoid epidemics caused by dug-well water, was of outstanding importance. In September 1936 she was called again to Szeged by Professor Gelei, where she was appointed a scientific research assistant. She studied several different water-types from the neighbourhood of Szeged, she carried out waterchemical, hydrobiological, ecological investigations, but her main field of interest was the taxonomy of peritrichid Ciliates. In 1937 she went to Germany for a several-months scientific visit, during which she spent two months in the laboratory of Professor Kolkwitz in Berlin. Then she spent six weeks in the Institut für Meeresbiologie at Helgoland. And finally she visited the Hydrobiological Institut in Plön for a month. In 1938 she spent two month at the Océanographie Institute in Split studying ecology and the taxonomy of peritrichid Ciliates.