Ladislav Hagara

Biography Hagara graduated in journalism at the Faculty of Arts of the Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia in 1968. However he was banned from pursuing his profession as a journalist on ideological grounds—based on articles he wrote protesting the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, he was registered as a "hostile person" by the ŠtB secret police. Instead he worked as an editor and a director of a publishing house.

In 2003, he successfully defended his dissertation on the topic of The Hyphodontia Genus in Slovakia (Basidiomycota, Corticiaceae).

His mushroom field guides have sold over half a million copies across more than 35 editions (in addition to Slovak also in Czech, French, German, Dutch and Hungarian), and include Otto's Encyclopedia of Mushrooms, a field guide to mushrooms growing in the territory of Slovakia and Czechia, containing 4,200 photographs and descriptions of 3,230 species. The standard author abbreviation Hagara is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name. He has also published several photo books about mushrooms. ) of the Slovak Mycological Society of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, as well as a member of mycological societies in Czechia, Austria and Germany. 1985: Golden Medal of the Slovak Women's Federation for the novel Arzén = Arsenic