ANNALES • Ser. hist. nat. •10• 2000 • 2 (21) OBLEINO / ANNIVERSAR ! /ANNIVERSARIES , I N ME MOR I AM , 152-151 OBLETNICE ANNIVERSARS ANNIVERSARIES Mitja Kaiigaric PROFESSOR LiVIO POLDIN I - AT THE SEVENTIETH ANNIVERSAR Y OF HIS BIRTH This year is the seventieth in the life of Dr. Livio Poldini, professor of botany at the Trieste University, the man who is due to his exceptional scientific and for no iess than half a century lasting work considered one of the greatest phytosociologists in Central Europe today. His botanical knowledge of the Northern Adriatic Karst, Friuli, Southeastern Alps as well as of Istra and the Mediterranean is truly superb, and it is thanks to him that the northwestern part of Italy is the best "covered" Italian province. He is, of course, also a true expert for the neighbouring Slovene and Croatian regions, for na­ture knows no political and national borders, and so much less for Prof. Poldini who has always been and still is an exceptionally open and honourable man. He was bom in Trieste on September 7t! l 1930 and concluded his studies with a PhD in Natural Sciences in 1949 at the University of Padova. He became associated botanical curator at the Natural History Museum of Tri­este in 1958 (till 1960). In 1961 he became assistant senior lecturer of Pharmacological Botany. He improved and perfected his knowledge under Prof. j. Braun-Blan­quet at the Station Internationale de Geobotanique Méditerranéenne et Alpine in the years 1961-62. He became an assistant professor in 1968 and a senior lec­turer at the University of Trieste in 1976. Since 1979 he has been lecturing Plant Ecology at the University of Trieste. His research work is concerned mainly with floristic, phytogeographic, pbytosociologic and phytochemical studies, with vegetation mapping and naturalistic land assessment. Among his numerous papers there are a monograph on vegetation of the Northern Adriatic Karst and a chorological atlas of the flora of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. He participated in the preparation of sylvicol­tural typologies both of Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. He was also devoted to applied ecology and nature conservation. He did the spadework in nature conserva­tion - theoretically and practically. In the seventies he participated in the preparation of the Regional Urban is-tic Plan with the aim to lay out nature parks and re­serves in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. From 1994 to 1996 he was the scientific supervisor of the project "Natura 2000 - Bioitaly" for the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, with an aim to create a catalogue of the areas with a prominent naturalistic value. In the years 1996 to 1998 he was re­sponsible for the project of vegetational restoration along the pipelines built in the Karst environment, in collaboration with SNAMPROGETTI. He was one of the first scientists who focused on the problem of abandon­ment and overgrowth in the Karst areas. Together with Prof. E. Feoli's team he developed the so-called "Trieste School" of numerical ecology and was one of the very first phytosociologists who used the computer supported numerical analysis as early as in the seventies! At the moment he is in charge of the national MURST project on "Biodiversity and processes of vege­tational recovery in marginal areas", focusing on the re­construction of mantels and bush encroachment in dif­ferent altitudinal belts (from plain to mountain) and on the relationships with the climatic-edaphic factors. Flis half-century experiences, knowledge and numerous floristic and vegetational data are now used by Prof. Poldini in his project "Causal analysis of the north-east­ern Italian vegetation", where the main aim is to sys­tematically analyse the vegetation cover of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, in order to produce a complete monograph on the regional vegetation. Could there have been done any more in a single region? Very re­cently he has also been devoted to haiophyte vegetation and coastal problematics. He is taking part in the "Project for the coastal and marine conservation in Friuli-Venezia Giulia". The most fascinating for me whenever I joined him during field excursions was the combination of taxonomic (floristic) knowledge with the ecological approaches. According to the Central-Euro­pean tradition he is simply a perfect florist. At the mo­ment he is compiling the Checklist of the Flora of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, in order to define the cor­rect nomenclature and to produce a catalogue of syno­nyms. He is also a regional adviser for the "lilustrierte Flora von Mitteleuropa" and "Atlas Flora Europaea,!. Although Prof. Poldini is Italian, his mentality and way of thinking as well as working is more Central European, Apart from it, he has retained some of the Austro-Hungarian spirit He is a modest, hardworking and systematic man and has always stuck, together with his associates, to certain discipline. All this has resulted in hundreds of published articles, dozens of completed projects, some voluminous books, and plenty of still un­finished things. Prof. Poldini is an extremely open personality (particularly as a citizen of Trieste) for understanding the contact area of the Northern Adriatic, Karst, istra, Di­narids and the Alps also from the anthropological, na­tional, cultural, linguistic and historical points of view. His very rich and perfectly spoken German, which he proposes to become the "conversation language" be­tween Central European countries, and enthusiasm to learn Slovene also enabled him to cooperate frequently with Slovene and Croatian botanists in the past and pre­ 152 AN N ALES • Ser. hist. nat. • 10 • 2000 • 1 (19) OBLETNICE /ANN I Vf RSARI /ANNIVERSARIES. IN MEMORIAM , 152-154 sent Because of his very "open mind" he is also a corre­spondent member of the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts, as we!i as a member of several editorial boards: Studia Geobotánica, Flora Mediterránea, Gor­tania, Hladnikia and - lately - also of the journal An­nales. am very proud to consider Prof. Poldini my pby­tosociological teacher: the hours, days and months 1 spent in his room at the university were certainly the most productive in my botanical career. During every morning that I spent at the computer and during every afternoon that I spent in a fruitful discussion with him certain conclusions were made. He gave much of his time to the students, colleagues and amateur botanists. For years he has been leading the "Regional Group for Floristic Research - GREF", which is very active in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region and broader. Prof. Poldini is celebrating his seventieth birthday in the midst of a number of very important scientific and applicative projects, student diplomas and other faculty commitments. W e sincerely hope that in the years to come he will retain all that penetrating mind and crea­tive inspiration, and at the same time wish him a lot of good health and of course many happy moments in na­ture amongst plants. iN MEMORIA M Robert Tur k BORI S KRIŽA N 1948-2000 Dolina Dragonje, Kraški rob, Sečoveliske soline, Škocjanski zatok. Če jih še imamo in če obstaja upanje, da bodo še naprej na seznamu vseslovenskega narav­nega bogastva, potem je to v veliki meri zasluga Borisa Križana, naravovarstven i ka in v zadnjih letih tudi direk­torja Medobčinskega zavoda za varstvo naravne in kul­turne dediščine Piran. In če se lahko Slovenija po svetu hvali z zelo zadovoljivim odstotkom zavarovane in ohra­njene naravne obale, je to predvsem Borisova zasluga. In če načrtovalci razvoja slovenske obale dandanes vsaj potihem pomislijo, da bi bilo morda dobro ohraniti tisto malo naravne in kulturne dediščine, ki nam je - bolj po sreči kot ne - še ostala, potem je tudi to posledica Bori­sovega neprestanega in neutrudnega dokazovanja in pre­pričevanja o nujnosti naravi prijaznega razvoja. O d kod je prinesel to širino in pronicljivost? Ali je po­srka! vso širino in prostranost rodnega Prekmurja ali mor­da uvide! zapletenost in medsebojno povezanost narav­nih procesov in socialnih pojavov med študijem geogra­fije? Kdo bi vedel. Dejstvo je, da je dovolj zgodaj stopil na pravi breg, da je vedel za pravo smer že takrat, ko v slovenskem besednjaku skorajda ni bilo zaslediti tega, L i vio Poldini (foto: T. Wraber). Boris Križan 153