John Alan Elix
Born1941 Edit this on Wikidata
Awards
Academic career
FieldsOrganic chemistry
lichenology
taxonomy,
plant physiology
Institutions
Doctoral studentsSimone Henrica J.J. Louwhoff
Author abbrev. (botany)Elix
Scholia has a profile for John Alan Elix (Q21339171).

John Alan (Jack) Elix (born 1941)[1] emeritus professor in chemistry at the Australian National University,[2][3] is an organic chemist who has contributed in many fields: lichenology, lichen chemotaxonomy, plant physiology[2] and biodiversity and natural product chemistry.[3] He has authored 2282 species names,[4] and 67 genera[5] in the field of mycology.

The standard author abbreviation Elix is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[6]

Education

His first degree, B.Sc., and his Ph.D were both in organic chemistry from the University of Adelaide. This was followed by post-doctoral years at the University of Cambridge and then a D.Sc. in natural products chemistry from the Australian National University.[7]

Career

Elix spent a post doctoral year in 1966 at Cambridge, returning to Australia in 1967 to a lectureship in chemistry at the ANU.[1] He retired as professor of chemistry in 2002,[1] becoming professor emeritus.[3]

By 1975 he had already published several papers on the organic chemistry of lichens,[8][9][10] and ultimately leading to work on the evolution, taxonomy and phylogeny of lichens.[11][12][13] For his work on lichens, Elix was awarded the Acharius Medal in 2004 and the Nancy T Burbidge Medal in 2015.[1] He is a prolific author (or coauthor) of new fungal and lichen species, having formally described about 1147 as of December 2017.[14]

He was honoured in 1997, when lichenologist Helge Thorsten Lumbsch published Elixiaceae which is a family of fungi in the order Umbilicariales. It contains two genera, Meridianelia, and the type genus, Elixia, which is named after John Alan Elix.[15]

He was also honoured again in 2004, with Melanelixia, which is a genus of foliose lichens in the family Parmeliaceae,[16] and in 2016 with Astrothelium elixii, a rare bark-dwelling Bolivian lichen.[17]

Selected publications

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d Cohn, Helen (2017). "Elix, John Alan (Jack) - Biographical entry - Encyclopedia of Australian Science". www.eoas.info. Retrieved 11 December 2020.
  2. ^ a b "Professor John Elix". researchers.anu.edu.au. Retrieved 11 December 2020.
  3. ^ a b c "John ELIX | Emeritus Professor | DSc | Australian National University, Canberra | ANU | Research School of Chemistry (RSC)". ResearchGate. Retrieved 31 January 2021.
  4. ^ "Mycobank:Advanced search (author contains Elix & rank=sp.)". Mycobank. Retrieved 12 December 2020.
  5. ^ "Using an advanced search (author name contains "Elix" AND rank=genus)". www.mycobank.org. Retrieved 10 December 2020.
  6. ^ International Plant Names Index.  Elix.
  7. ^ Nash, T.H. "IAL - Acharius Medallists: Jack Elix". www.lichenology.org. Retrieved 12 January 2021.
  8. ^ John A. Elix (1975). "2'-O-Methylphysodic acid and hydroxyphysodic acid: two new depsidones from the lichen Hypogymnia billardieri" (PDF). Australian Journal of Chemistry. 28 (4): 849–858. ISSN 0004-9425. Wikidata Q104151554.
  9. ^ JA Elix; U Engkaninan (1975). "The structure of galbinic acid. A depsidone from the lichen Usnea undulata". Australian Journal of Chemistry. 28 (8): 1793–1797. doi:10.1071/CH9751793. ISSN 0004-9425. Wikidata Q78432536.
  10. ^ John A. Elix; David A. Jackman; Melvin V. Sargent (1974). "Structure of the lichen depsidone pannarin". Journal of the Chemical Society. Chemical communications: 892–893. ISSN 0022-4936. Wikidata Q104151783.
  11. ^ Steven D Leavitt; Martin Westberg; Matthew P Nelsen; et al. (23 February 2018). "Multiple, Distinct Intercontinental Lineages but Isolation of Australian Populations in a Cosmopolitan Lichen-Forming Fungal Taxon, Psora decipiens (Psoraceae, Ascomycota)". Frontiers in Microbiology. 9: 283. doi:10.3389/FMICB.2018.00283. ISSN 1664-302X. PMC 5829036. PMID 29527197. Wikidata Q51148234.
  12. ^ S. Y. Kondratyuk; I. Kärnefelt; A. Thell; J. A. Elix; J. Kim; A. S. Kondratiuk; J.-S. Hur (September 2015). "Brownlielloideae, a new subfamily in the Teloschistaceae (Lecanoromycetes, Ascomycota)". Acta Botanica Hungarica. 57 (3–4): 321–343. doi:10.1556/034.57.2015.3-4.6. ISSN 0236-6495. Wikidata Q54800616.
  13. ^ Pradeep K Divakar; Ana Crespo; Mats Wedin; et al. (24 August 2015). "Evolution of complex symbiotic relationships in a morphologically derived family of lichen-forming fungi". New Phytologist. 208 (4): 1217–1226. doi:10.1111/NPH.13553. ISSN 0028-646X. PMID 26299211. Wikidata Q35753148.
  14. ^ Lücking, Robert (2020). "Three challenges to contemporaneous taxonomy from a licheno-mycological perspective". Megataxa. 1 (1): 78–103 [85]. doi:10.11646/megataxa.1.1.16.
  15. ^ Lumbsch, H.T. (1997). "Systematic studies in the suborder Agyriineae (Lecanorales)". Journal of the Hattori Botanical Laboratory. 83: 62.
  16. ^ Blanco, Oscar; Crespo, Ana; Divakar, Pradeep K.; Esslinger, Theodore L.; Hawksworth, David L.; Lumbsch, H. Thorsten (2004). "Melanelixia and Melanohalea, two new genera segregated from Melanelia (Parmeliaceae) based on molecular and morphological data" (PDF). Mycological Research. 108 (8): 873–884. doi:10.1017/S0953756204000723. PMID 15449592.
  17. ^ Flakus, Adam; Kukwa, Martin; Aptroot, André (2016). "Trypetheliaceae of Bolivia: an updated checklist with descriptions of twenty-four new species". The Lichenologist. 48 (6): 661–692. doi:10.1017/s0024282915000559.

Further reading

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