Johanna Westerdijk

Johanna Westerdijk (; 4 January 1883 – 15 November 1961) was a Dutch plant pathologist and the first female professor in the Netherlands.

Early life Johanna Westerdijk, called "Hans" by friends,

While working as director of the phytopathological laboratory in 1908 she was in charge of keeping the International Association of Botanists collection of about 80 cultures of fungi. Under her supervision this collection expanded to over 10,000 strains of 6,000 different species of fungi, yeasts and actinomycetes. Named the Centraalbureau voor Schimmelcultures (Central Bureau of Fungal Cultures) the objective of this collection was and still is to keep a variety of fungi in cultures for distribution to research workers all over the world. In 1913, she became the first female recipient of a grant from the Buitenzorg Fund (from the city of Buitenzorg, now called Bogor in Sundanese, in Indonesia), which she used to collect samples from a variety of diseased crops such as tobacco, sugar, coffee, tea, etc., and made cultures of the fungi for the collection.

When she wanted to test the progress of her students, she would take them to a fancy bakery surrounded by fashionable ladies and suddenly ask them questions such as "OK, now what can you tell me about yellow disease or any other disease". She also had her own tradition at every new PhD ceremony, where a flag would be raised and three geese wearing white, red and blue bows around their necks would parade around the building. The doctor and his/her professor advisor would plant a tree in the one and a half hectare garden. This tradition became legendary. raising money from different municipalities in the Netherlands, which she assigned to her first PhD student Marie Beatrice Schwarz. Later J. Westerdijk assigned another student, Christine Johanna Buisman to confirm the finding from Schwarz that Ophiostoma ulmi was the cause of the disease. Buisman additionally bred elms for disease resistance, but unfortunately the elm that she developed was highly susceptible to another fungal disease caused by a Nectria sp.

Honors and awards Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (1951) Fellow of the Linnean Society of London Order of the Netherlands Lion Helicodendron westerdijkiae Pestalotiopsis westerdykiae Gyrothyrium westerdijkiae (now called Schizothyrium pomi) Torulopsis westerdijkiae Westerdykella centenaria

Legacy In 1907 Johanna Westerdijk became director of the CBS (Centraalbureau voor Schimmelcultures). In honour of Johanna Westerdijk's life and work, on 10 February 2017 the institute was renamed as the Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute.