Elisa Hirschhorn

This name uses Spanish naming customs: the first or paternal family name is Hirschhorn, and, for married women, the optional marital name is de Mazoti.
Elisa HIrschhorn
Born(1905-07-12)12 July 1905
Pueblo Cazes, Entre Ríos Province, Argentina
Died23 June 1995(1995-06-23) (aged 89)
Lomas de Zamora, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina
OccupationMycologist
SpouseLuis Bernabé Mazoti
Academic background
Alma materNational University of La Plata
Academic work
DisciplineMycology
Sub-disciplineSmut fungi
Institutions

Elisa Hirschhorn de Mazoti (12 July 1905 – 23 June 1995) was an Argentine mycologist who specialized in smuts, a type of fungus with a large amount of teliospores.

Biography

Elisa Hirschhorn was born on 12 July 1905 in Pueblo Cazes, Entre Ríos Province.[1] She was educated at a primary school in San José, Entre Ríos and at the Colegio del Uruguay, before receiving her professor degree at the National University of La Plata (UNLP) in 1929.[2][1] After working at the National Normal School of La Plata as a Professor of Physics in 1931, she returned to UNLP, where she spent some time working as a professor and, in 1938, received her doctorate in natural sciences.[2][1]

Hirschhorn spent several years as a postdoctoral researcher in the United States, working at the State College of Washington Department of Plant Pathology (1943-1944) and the University of Minnesota Department of Plant Pathology and Botany (1944) and was a member of Sigma Xi (1944).[1] She was appointed a Guggenheim Fellow in 1944 and 1945 for the purposes of studying smuts,[2] so she was able to remain at the University of Minnesota before continuing at the Farlow Herbarium of Cryptogamic Botany.[1]

Hirschhorn returned to Argentina after her postdoctoral training was completed.[1] She was principal researcher at the National Institute for Agricultural Research, and she also worked at the National Center for Agricultural Research Phytotechnics Institute and the Phytotechnical Institute of Santa Catalina, the latter of which she would continue to work at as recently as 1995.[1] She also at one point served as Director of Research and Development Projects at National Scientific and Technical Research Council.[1]

As an academic, Hirschhorn specialized in smuts. In addition to receiving the Guggenheim Fellowship for her research on smuts,[2] she published a few journal articles on the smut fungi genus Ustilago.[3][4][5] In 1945, while a researcher at Washington, she discovered two species of smut fungi: Glomosporium amaranthi and Tilletia phalaridis.[6] In 1986, she published the book Las ustilaginales de la flora argentina (lit. 'The ustilaginales of the Argentine flora').[7] In 1989, Hirschhorn was elected an honorary member of the Sociedad Argentina de Botánica [es] and, at a diplomatic reception at the Embassy of the United States, Buenos Aires, Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences.[1]

She married Luis Bernabé Mazoti, an agronomist who worked as a professor at UNLP.[1][8] She died on 23 June 1995 in Lomas de Zamora, Buenos Aires Province.[1] After her death, Carlos Naranjo said that Hirschhorn "will be here forever in every little piece of [the Phytotechnical Institute of] Santa Catalina, and we will only have to think about her to feel her presence."[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Naranjo, Carlos A. (1995). "OBITUARIO: ELISA HIRSCHHORN DE MAZOTI (1905-1995)" (PDF). Bol. Soc. Argent. Bot. 31: 159–160.
  2. ^ a b c d "Elisa Hirschhorn". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 11 December 2023.
  3. ^ Hirschhorn, Elisa (1939). "Las especies del género Ustilago en la Argentina". Darwiniana. 3 (2): 347–418. ISSN 0011-6793.
  4. ^ Fischer, George W.; Hirschhorn, Elisa (1945). "A Critical Study of Some Species of Ustilago Causing Stem Smut on Various Grasses". Mycologia. 37 (2): 236–266. doi:10.2307/3754921. ISSN 0027-5514.
  5. ^ Fischer, George W.; Hirschhorn, Elisa (1945). "Observations on Certain Species of Ustilago on Hilaria, Stenotaphrum, and Muhlenbergia". Mycologia. 37 (3): 318–325. doi:10.2307/3754867. ISSN 0027-5514.
  6. ^ Hirschhorn, Elisa (1945). "Two New Species of the Tilletiaceae from Argentina". Mycologia. 37 (3): 278–283. doi:10.2307/3754863. ISSN 0027-5514.
  7. ^ Hirschhorn, Elisa (1986). Las ustilaginales de la flora argentina. es: Comisión de Investigaciones Científicas de la Provincia de Buenos Aires.
  8. ^ Arriaga, Héctor O (12 May 2009). "MAZOTI Luis Bernabé Ing. Agr". Academia Nacional de Agronomia y Veterinaria (in Spanish). Retrieved 11 December 2023.