ARMANDO TEODORO HUNZIKER (29 AUGUST 1919 - 12 DECEMBER 2001)

Armando T. Hunziker was born in Chacabuco, a rural town of the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 29 August 1919, into a family of Swiss origin. He studied agronomy at the University of Buenos Aires and wrote his graduate thesis on the species of Cuscuta from Argentina and Uruguay under the supervision of Prof. Lorenzo Parodi, to whom he showed gratitude for the rest of his life. He was only 25 years old when, in 1945, through the intervention of Nobel Prize Winner Bernardo Houssay, he was offered the post of Curator at the Botanical Museum of the University of Córdoba. It was a difficult task given the state of the collections and the abandonment of the institution. However, his brilliant intellect, his incredible capacity for work, and his sense of organisation allowed him not only to revitalise the Botanical Museum but also to diversify the study of plant biology through the formation of many new scholars. This group of people was to become the foundation for the Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal (IMBIV), an institution Hunziker designed and helped create, and of which he was the first director (1983–1996).