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

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

In 1942 she was employed at the Hungarian Natural History Museum, where she worked until her retirement. She started to work at the Botanical Department, where a modern laboratory was set up. She dealt with unicellular animals and plants, and also treated the moss and liverwort materials. During the second World War the laboratory was completely destroyed. After the second World War she moved to the Zoological Department, where she started the elaboration of the Collection of Lower Invertebrates. Then she worked on unicellular organisms again, in the summer of 1948 she studied the Peritricha fauna of Lake Balaton. In December 1947 she married a lawyer: Dr. Kornél Rüdiger. From that time her name was completed with the R., as it can be found in her later articles. Between 1948 and 1951 one of the most important research activities of the Museum was the biological assessment of the Bátorliget mire, which was the first Hungarian Nature Protection Area. Beyond the taxonomical investigation of Protozoa, Jolán Stiller organised the hydrozoological and limnological assessment of the area. From 1950 she took part in the activities of the group formed by the scientists of the Biological Research Institute in Tihany. This group intended to study the waters flowing into Lake Balaton. They carried out the complex study of Pécsely-stream, and beside the protozoans Stiller also elaborated the crustaceans. In 1954 she had a serious accident, after which she fortunately recovered completely. In 1956 the museum was hit by a shell, and in the ensuing fire her collection annihilated. In 1957 she went for a collecting expedition in Romania with the help of the Marine Biology Research Institute in Agigea-Konstanza, in order to reestablish her lost collection. She took part in the writing of the series "Fauna Hungáriáé", she was the author of the taxonomic identification keys of Peritricha and Hypotrichida. She retired on the 1st of January, 1963. Nevertheless she kept working, and finished her identification books. Later she became interested in the history of science, she studied the history of Hungarian Adriatic Sea research. Her last article dealt with this topic, too, and there is an unpublished book of hers written on this theme. She acquired her candidate degree in biological sciences in 1954, and she was appointed the Doctor of Biological Sciences by the Hungarian Academy of Science in 1989 in recognition of her scientific achievements. Most of her scientific work was focused on Protozoa, she was a well-known expert of Peritrichid Ciliates. She described 3 new genera, and 124 species and varieties of fresh-water and marine Peritricha, Hypotrichida. Six species were named after her. In Hungary she pioneered the hygienic assessment methods of drinking water, she was an internationally recognised expert of this field. Her research was a significant contribution in the faunistics of Hungarian water-bodies. Beside the protozooans she contributed valuable data on crustaceans, too. Her work on Hungarian sodic waters is especially valuable, and helped to explore the Protozoa fauna of this water-type. She was the curator of the Collection of Lower Invertebrates in the Zoological Department of the Hungarian Natural History Museum, and she reestablished this collection both after its deterioration during the Second World War and after the fire caused by the shelling in 1956. She died on 18th of July, 1993 in Budapest. Scientific publications 1930 Bemerkung zu Prof. Swarczowsky's "Baikalprotistenfauna". - Archiv für Prodstenkunde 74: 533-534. 1931 Die verwandschaftlichen Beziehungen der Säugetierordnungen mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der näheren Verwandschaften der Anthropoideen. - Archivio zoologico italiano 16: 1169-1229. (co-author J. Mátyás)