Ernest Mayer

Ernest Mayer (1920 to 2009) was a Slovenian botanist, born in Zgornji Tuhinj, who studied biology at the University of Ljubljana and the University of Vienna and graduated in botany in Vienna in 1947. He then rose from assistant trainee at the Botanical Institute of the University of Ljubljana to professor of botany at its Biotechnical Faculty, a post he held until 1978, and afterwards worked as a senior scientist at the Jovan Hadzi Institute of Biology of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts until he retired in 1991. His work dealt with the phytogeography, morphology and taxonomy of higher plants of the former Yugoslavia and the Balkan Peninsula, with an emphasis on endemics, and he wrote or co-wrote over a hundred scientific papers.