Paul Diederich
Paul Diederich is a Luxembourgish mathematics teacher and mycologist who specialises in lichenicolous fungi. Since 1986 he has taught mathematics at the École de Commerce et de Gestion in Luxembourg, and from 1989 to 2008 he served as a research associate at the country's National Museum of Natural History. He has authored more than 190 publications, including major monographs and collaborative volumes, and his work has been recognised with awards such as the Van Rompaey Award and the Tuckerman Award.
Career and research
Diederich studied mathematics at the Université libre de Bruxelles from 1979 to 1983, earning a licence en mathématiques. He then undertook teacher training, studied computer science at the University of Liège in 1986–1987, and completed a doctorate in botany in 1989 at the Université catholique de Louvain. His thesis treated the taxonomy, ecology and biogeography of Luxembourg's epiphytic lichens and their lichenicolous fungi. Since 1986 he has taught mathematics at the École de Commerce et de Gestion in Luxembourg, and since 1989 he has collaborated with the National Museum of Natural History; he was a research associate there from 1989 to 2008. He has been active in the Société des naturalistes luxembourgeois since 1974, joined its committee in 1985, and has served on the editorial committee for the society's bulletin.His research focuses on lichenicolous fungi. He has produced more than 190 publications, including a monograph on the lichenicolous heterobasidiomycetes. His fieldwork spans Belgium, Luxembourg and northern France as well as Papua New Guinea, and he has described more than 200 new species, several new genera, and proposed two new orders, Lichenoconiales and Lichenostigmatales. He contributed editorially to volume 2 of Lichen Flora of the Greater Sonoran Desert Region and co-authored a checklist of the lichens and lichenicolous fungi of Belgium and Luxembourg. He also co-created and maintains widely used online databases: the regional checklist "The lichens and lichenicolous fungi of Belgium, Luxembourg and northern France" and the global "Lichenicolous fungi – worldwide checklist".
Honours and recognition
As a school student he won first prize in Luxembourg's Réalisations Jeunes scientifiques for a bioindicator-based air-pollution map, and the following year received a distinction at the 11th European Philips Contest for Young Scientists and Inventors in Oslo ; he later published the project in the SNL bulletin. He was awarded the Van Rompaey Award in 1991 for the best recent botanical publication in Belgium and Luxembourg, and has twice received the Tuckerman Award for the best paper published in the academic journal The Bryologist.Taxa named in his honour include the genera Diederichia, Diederimyces, and Diederichomyces, and several species: Strigula diederichiana ; Byssoloma diederichii ; Taeniolella diederichiana ; Zwackhiomyces diederichii ; Relicina diederichii ; Enterographa diederichiana ; Endohyalina diederichii ; Tremella diederichiana ; Capronia diederichiana ; and Abrothallus diederichii.