Jiří Paclt

Jiří (Juraj) Paclt (15 January 1925 – 18 September 2015) was a Czech-Slovak botanist and entomologist. Although born and raised in the Czech part of Czechoslovakia, he spent the majority of his work life in the Slovak part that later became Slovakia. His scientific work is characterised by a wide scope of interests and activities, ranging from botany over mineralogy to entomology.

Personal life and education Jiří Paclt was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) to Marie (née Šrámková; 1883–1953), a housewife, and Emil Paclt (1880–1953), a mechanical engineer working in the Chief Technical Council at Czechoslovak State Railways. He grew up in Prague, where he went to primary school from 1931 to 1936, followed by high school from 1936 to 1944. After graduation, he was assigned as a laborer to the company Autoavia as part of the Protectorate "Totaleinsatz" (total deployment). After the end of World War II, he enrolled at the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Charles University in Prague. He completed his studies in October 1948 with rigorous examinations in botany and zoology and defended his diploma thesis entitled "Monografie rodu Catalpa" ("Monograph of the genus Catalpa"), graduating on 3 June 1949 and receiving the title of RNDr. He published his diploma thesis from 1950 to 1954 in seven parts in English as "Synopsis of the genus Catalpa (Bignoniaceae)". As an employee of the Institute of Experimental Phytopathology and Entomology at the Center of Biological and Ecological Sciences of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Ivanka pri Dunaji, he conducted his doctoral studies as an external student. On 5 June 1972 he received the scientific title of Candidate of Biological Sciences based on his thesis "Defense reactions and premature pathogenic extinction of woody plants". Chrysoesthiidae Paclt, 1974, now a synonym of the twirler moths subfamily Gelechiinae

Aves – birds Neolepidothrix Paclt, 2009, nomen novum for Lepidothrix Bonaparte, 1854 (Pipridae)

Plants Shiuyinghua Paclt, 1962, currently placed in Paulowniaceae

Taxa named after Paclt Several taxa have been named in honor of Jiří Paclt, such as Pseudosinella paclti Rusek, 1961 (Collembola), Litocampa paclti Condé, 1981 (Diplura) and one generic taxon Pacltiobius Kaplin, 1995 (Archaeognatha),

Publications Jiří Paclt was a polyglot and published in Czech, Slovak, French, English and German. His very good understanding of Latin and Ancient Greek became evident in his comments on the misrepresentation of scientific names of animals. Furthermore, he did transcriptions from Cyrillic into Latin, but also conversely into Cyrillic, as well as into Japanese, Chinese and Arabic.

When publishing works in Slovakia he often used the name Juraj, the Slovak form of his first name, instead of the Czech form Jiří.

Paclt published more than 350 scientific articles, most of them without any co-author. An extensive bibliography of his bibliography can be found in Matoušek (2015).