AASP Primary Records Program

PALYNOS 10(1): p. 2, 1987.

JANINA CELINA OSZAST
1908-1986

The late Janina Oszast was born in Krakow in 1908 and spent most of her life in this region of southern Poland. In 1934 she graduated from Jagiellonian University with a major in botany, the subject that she then taught at a women's' college in Krakow for the next 16 years.

During the period of the Nazi occupation of Poland (1939-45), she exhibited her extreme patriotism and courage by organizing aid for Polish prisoners, as well as by her activities in the underground Polish national guerrilla army (AK).

After the end of World War II she became interested in palynology and took a position in 1950 with the Instytut Botaniki, Poiska Academia Nauk (Institute of Botany, Polish Academy of Sciences) in Krakow. She soon demonstrated that her palynological interests were unusually broad. Initially (during the early 50's) she was involved with reconstructions of the climate and vegetation of northern Poland during the Pleistocene and Holocene. Next (1957) she described specimens of pollen of the then-putative angiosperm, Eucommiidites troedssonii Erdtman, from refractory Jurassic clays from Grojec. She was one of the first Polish palynologists to study pollen and spores of Tertiary sediments and to demonstrate the stratigraphic value of Tertiary palynomorphs. For example, in 1960 she published a detailed, well-illustrated paper on the fossil pollen derived from Tortorian (Miocene) clays in Upper Silesia (Monographiae Botanicae 9: 1-46). Next, she turned her attention to the composition of the Neogene floras of the western Carpathian Mountains, culminating in a classic paper (with Leon Stuchlik) in Acta Palaeobotanica XVIII: 45-86, 1977.

Although she was officially retired from the Botanical Institute in 1978 when she reached her 70th birthday, she continued to carry on her palynological research until her death. Further examples of her amazing breadth of knowledge are seen in her pioneering work in the field of archeological pollen analysis, as well as a basic study of the Quaternary pollen flora of Mongolia.

Janina was much loved and respected by her many friends and colleagues. We have been greatly impressed by her demonstrated patriotism to her mother country, as well as by her infectious enthusiasm for so many different aspects of palynological research.

Elzbieta Turnau
Inst. of Geological Sciences PAN
Senacka, 3
31-002 Krakow, POLAND