Marinus Anton Donk
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Through Taxonomy (biology), Nomenclature and Inflorescence
Early life
Donk was born in Situbondo, East Java in 1908, and completed secondary school in The Hague, Netherlands. He studied biology at the University of Utrecht, starting in 1927. As a graduate student in mycology he completed the work for his 1931 "Revisie van de Nederlandse Heterobasidiomyceteae" (Revision of the Dutch Heterobasidiomycetes). He completed his studies and attained a doctorate degree in 1933 with the second part of his work, Revisie van de Nederlandse Heterobasidiomyceteae II. Afterwards he returned to Java, where he worked from 1934 to 1940 as a teacher, and, starting from 1941 as a curator in the herbarium of the Buitenzorg Botanical Garden. He was interned in a Japanese prison camp from 1942 to 1945. During his time there, he managed to culture yeast that grew in palm inflorescences in the camps; he used the yeast to ferment rice, which provided essential vitamins for the prisoners.
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Career
Donk's main research area was on the taxonomy of the mushrooms, especially the Aphyllophorales and Heterobasidiomycetes. He was involved in the development of a modern system to classify the Aphyllophorales and influenced nomenclatural rules for mushrooms.
Donk became Head of the Herbarium Bogoriense from 1947 to 1955, and a Deputy Professor at the University of Indonesia in 1952. It was around this time when he became interested in nomenclature. After returning to Holland, he was the head of the Mycological Department at Rijksherbarium in Leiden from 1956 to 1972, and a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences from 1954 to 1960. Donk was also the president of the Nomenclature Committee of the International Botanical Congresses, in the Committee for Fungi and Lichens. Together with his colleague Rudolph Arnold Maas Geesteranus, Donk founded the journal Persoonia in 1959.
He was honoured in 1973, when 2 botanist published Donkioporia, which is a genus of fungi in the family Fomitopsidaceae.
Taxa described
- Clavariadelphus Donk
- Datronia Donk
- Osteina Donk
- Ramariopsis (Donk) Corner (as Clavaria subg. Ramariopsis)
- Thanatephorus Donk
Eponymous taxa
- Donkella Doty 1950 (now Clavulinopsis)
- Donkia Pilat 1937 (now Climacodon)
- Donkioporia Kotl. & Pouzar 1973