Walter Gams

Konrad Walter Gams (9 August 1934 – 9 April 2017) was an Austrian mycologist. He worked as a scientist for his entire career at the Centraalbureau voor Schimmelcultures (Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute) in the Netherlands. He served in the international authority on classification of fungi, the Special Committee on Fungi and Lichens (renamed Nomenclatural Committee for Fungi), from which he contributed to the development of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants. Some species of fungi he identified became sources of pharmaceutical drugs such as cephalosporin C (antibiotic) from Sarocladium strictum and Acremonium chrysogenum, and ciclosporin (immunosuppressant) from Tolypocladium inflatum.

Biography Gams was born in Zurich, Switzerland, to Helmut Gams and Margarete Gams-Schima. His father, originally from Brünn (now Brno in the Czech Republic), was a botanist and a professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany, and then at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. He studied botany in his father's department for his bacherlor's degree. He went to the University of Zurich to study under his uncle Emil Schmid for his master's degree. He returned to Innsbruck and obtained a PhD in 1960. With a post-doctoral scholarship, he went to UK to work with Dennis Parkinson, a microbiologist at the University of Liverpool. including two monumental monographs, Fungi in Agricultural Soils (1971, original in German in 1970 ) and Compendium of Soil Fungi (in two volumes, first published in 1980). Together they discovered novel fungal species such as Paraphaeosphaeria sporulosa and Podila (Mortierella) epigama. Gams left Biologischen Bundesanstalt to join the Centraalbureau voor Schimmelcultures at Baarn (renamed as Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute and relocated at Utrecht) in the Netherlands. He worked there until his retirement in 1999.

Since 1984, ) that maintains the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants. He served as the committee's secretary for several years. Tolypocladium inflatum is the source of ciclosporin A,

Personal life Gams never used his first name and even shunned it as his initial. He and Sophia were passionate musicians, playing and composing several classical and folk music at different occasions.

Gams founded a charity programme called "Studienstiftung mykologische Systematik und Ökologie" in 1995 for educational funding of young mycologists, particularly from poor backgrounds. The foundation is now administered by the Deutschsprachige Mykologische Gesellschaft (German Mycological Society).

Awards and honours Honorary members of British Mycological Society, Iranian Mycological Society, and Mycological Society of America Distinguished Mycologist Award of the Mycological Society of America (2005) Anton de Bary medal of the Deutschen Phytomedizinischen Gesellschaft (2012)