Sarie Magdalena Perold (1928–2011)

Abstract

Dr Sarie Perold (nee Lombard) (Figure 1) died peacefully in her sleep in the early hours of Friday 11 November 2011, aged 83. She embarked upon a career in bryology rather late in life, at the age of 51, but nevertheless became internationally recognized as a leading authority on the taxonomy and nomenclature of African thallose liverworts, in particular the genus Riccia. She was born in Johannesburg, South Africa on 19 May 1928. Her father was a teacher and her mother a housewife who also ran a nursery school from home at some stage. Dr Perold matriculated from the Kensingtonse Hoerskool with four distinctions in 1945. She wanted to follow in her brother’s footsteps, who studied medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), but had to settle for a BSc degree in medical technology, majoring in Anatomy and Histology, which she completed in 1949. From 1950 to mid-1967, she worked as a laboratory technician in Histology and Chemical Pathology at the South African Institute for Medical Research, then for Irving & Robertson, a firm of private pathologists, and finally as a research assistant in the Department of Chemical Pathology at the Wits Medical School, where she co-authored four papers. In 1953, she married Jan Perold and their only child, Jan, was born in 1967. For the next eight and a half years (1967–1975), she was a housewife and mother. Re-entering the work force in 1976, Dr Perold held several temporary teaching posts at private and government schools in Pretoria and completed second year botany and zoology courses at the University of Pretoria. In 1979, she joined the National Herbarium (PRE) of the Botanical Research Institute (BRI), now the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), as a part-time technical assistant to Dr Robert (Bob) Magill, who was undertaking a revision of southern African mosses. When Professor Dr O.H. Volk of the University of Wurzburg, Germany drew attention to the need for a taxonomic revision of southern African Ricciaceae, Dr Magill assigned this project to Dr Perold. During the Volks’ visit to PRE in 1981, he introduced the research staff of the Cryptogamic Herbarium, which consisted of Dr Magill, Dr Perold, Dr Frank Brusse (lichenologist) and myself, to Riccias on a collecting excursion to Middelburg in Mpumalanga. This was the beginning of a love–hate relationship between Dr Perold and Professor Volk which lasted up to his death in 2000 and resulted in the co-authorship of 13 papers (Glen & Perold, 2000). Dr Perold was very appreciative of his mentorship and dedicated her PhD thesis to him. In a letter to Professor Volk dated 25 April 1994 she wrote: ‘I often think of you and of how much you taught me by correspondence and your visits here’. Dr Perold embarked on a scanning electron microscope (SEM) study of Riccia spores and Professor Dr Rudy Schuster (USA) was so impressed by her results that he facilitated publication in Journal of the Hattori Correspondence to: Jacques van Rooy, National Herbarium, South African National Biodiversity Institute, Private Bag X101, Pretoria 0001, South Africa. Email: J.vanRooy@sanbi.org.za Figure 1 Sarie Magdalena Perold (1928–2011). Photograph: Adela Romanowski.