A tribute to Prof. DSc Elissaveta Bozilova on the occasion of her 80th birthday

Abstract

One of the outstanding European palynologists and palaeoecologists, Prof. DSc Elissaveta Bozilova celebrates her 80th birthday on March 17th 2012. For more than 50 years she has been actively involved in science and teaching in the Faculty of Biology at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski. Her interest in botany, and subsequently in palynology, was encouraged and supported by her master’s degree supervisor Prof. Boris Kitanov in the mid 1950s and also by her family members. The remarkable scientific and teaching career of Elissaveta Bozilova started in 1958 when she joined the academic staff of the Department of Botany as an Assistant Professor. The initial years of her research were devoted mostly to the investigation of the pollen morphology of various gymnosperm and flowering plant taxa, but subsequently this knowledge was applied to the study of the late Quaternary history of the Bulgarian flora and vegetation, and gradually expanded to aeropalynology, melissopalynology, archaeobotany, marinopalynology and pollen monitoring. Numerous pollen analytical studies were conducted by her on lake, mire and peat sediments in the glaciated and nonglaciated Bulgarian mountains, along the Black Sea coast, the Danube valley and inland plains as well as on marine cores. Elissaveta Bozilova and her co-workers postulated for the first time the main chronological stages in the lateglacial and Holocene vegetation development in different parts of the country and contributed to the elucidation of important scientific issues such as location of glacial tree refugia and migration routes, fluctuations in the tree line, formation of recent vegetation belts and specific plant communities, pollen dispersal mechanisms, climate changes, sea-level fluctuations, human impact on the natural environment since prehistoric times, etc. She also laid the foundations of contemporary aeropalynological and melissopalynological studies in Bulgaria. An important premise for the recognition of Elissaveta Bozilova as a leading Bulgarian palynologist was the establishment of personal and fruitful long standing scientific contacts with outstanding foreign specialists, including Prof. H. -J. Beug, Prof. G. Lang, Prof. B. E. Berglund, Dr. A. Smit, Prof. K. Faegri, Prof. H. J. B. Birks, Prof. M. Ralska-Jasiewiczowa, Prof. Y. Vasari, Prof. B. Ammann, Prof. L. -K. Konigsson, Prof. S. Hicks, Prof. J. -L. de Beaulieu, Prof. K. -E. Behre, Prof. N. Athanasiadis, Prof. C. -A. Haeggstrom, Prof. H. Jungner, Prof. A. Gerasimidis, and many others, who shared generously their knowledge and expertise in palaeoecological and botanical research, both in the field and in the laboratory. One of the most important professional merits of Elissaveta Bozilova, in addition to her intensive research and teaching activities, was the organization of the Laboratory of Palynology at the Department of Botany, which she administrated successfully until 2000. The laboratory established itself as the leading national centre in fundamental and applied palynology and palaeoecology, where Elissaveta Bozilova supervised over 25 master and doctoral students from several generations, most of them being engaged today either in research or teaching in the broad Communicated by F. Bittmann.