Zs. P. Komáromy szerk.: Studia Botanica Hungarica 14. 1980 (Budapest, 1980)
Krenner, József Andor: The post-war remains of the diatom collection of Dr. József Pantocsek
S T U D I A XIV. BOTANICA HUNGARICA (Antea: Fragmenta Botanica) 1980 P- 9 " 2 » The post-war remains of the diatom collection of Dr. József Pantocsek By J. A. KRENNER (Received November 10, 1979) Dr. József Pantocsek was bom on the 15th of October, 1864 at Nagyszombat (Com. Pozsony, Hungary) and died on the 4th of September 1916 at Tavarnok (Com. Nyitra). After having finished the medical faculty of the university in Vienna and received his diplôme he became district physician at Tavarnok. In 1896 he was appointed director of the state public hospital at the town Pozsony (today Bratislava). Beside his extensive knowledge in the medical sciences he was a prominent botanist, too. Thus, he was the first to describe the flora of the country Montenegro based on his independent researches. From the 1800s he developed his leisure time entirely to the study of the diatoms in which field he became one of the most competent authority in the world. Several phanerogamic and diatom species and also a diatom genus were named after him. As a diatomist he owned a rich diatom collection, which was bought after his death'by the Botanical Department of the Hungarian National Natural History Museum (formerly National Museum). The collection consisted of over five thousand microscopic slides, placed in preparation preserver cabinet chests. The value of the collection was emphasised by the many hundred pieces of the so called "type slide"-s from localities all over the world. Thesecond World War caused a great damage in the collection. Over four thousand slides of the total preparations had been sholly devastated and the remaining part too suffered severely. The portfolios holding the slides were battered and soiled with wet mud and ruin debris, the slide an coverslips of the preparations suffered all kinds of breaking and spliting. From under the crashed coverslips partly or totally the mounting resin oozed out in many cases. Since the centenarian date of the publishing of the first volume of Pantocsek' s magnificent work "Beiträge zur Kenntnis der fossilen Bacillarien Ungarns" (1886) is approaching the director of the Botanical Department, Mrs. Szujkó Dr. Julia Lacza, made arrangements in 1973 for the best possible restoration of the damaged remains of the collection and for the determination of the diatoms of the slides to be renovated. With the accomplishment of these tasks the present author has been charged. I undertook these jobs all the more willingly because in the 1920s as the assistant of the Botanical Department at the bidding of the late director Dr. Ferdinánd Filarszky I had been compiling an official inventory for the microscopic slides of Pantocsek' s diatom cabinets, thus being fundamentally acquainted, already in those times, with this imposing collection. Besides the cleaning and restoring operations of the remains I determined the diatoms in the slides, traced the localities of the preparations that had lost their labels, moreover - which appeared to be most necessary and well motivated - I critically revised the diatomic names on the labels given In many cases by Pantocsek himself. From the ruined mass I succeed to restore altogether 918 diatom preparations into excellent condition, of which I determined 769 different forms. I enumerate the diatoms of the slides in an alphabetic list below, presenting along with in it the original types and varieties established by Pantocsek and the characters of the respective localities. There are some unpublished names: in genera Achnanthes , Aulacodiscus , Caloneis , Campylodlscus.
