Chaya Clara Heyn (; June 13, 1924 – December 27, 1998) was an Israeli

botanist Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

and professor at the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...

, also working in the university's herbarium. She has cataloged and identified many plants, and three

taxa In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; : taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular name and ...

are named in her honor.

Biography and education

Clara Blau was born in 1924 in Cluj, Transylvania, Romania. Her father, Paul-Pinchas (1889–1948), was a journalist and a businessman and had a doctorate in international relations. Her mother, Sima (née Grünfeld, 1895–1990) was a housewife. Her brother is

Joshua Blau Yehoshua Blau, also spelled Joshua (; 22 September 1919 – 20 October 2020) was an Israeli scholar of Arabic language and literature, previously Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Life and career Blau was born in Cluj, R ...

. In 1931, the family emigrated to

Baden, Austria Baden (Central Bavarian: ''Bodn''), unofficially distinguished from Baden (disambiguation), other Badens as Baden bei Wien (Baden near Vienna), is a spa town in Austria. It serves as the capital of Baden (district of Austria), Baden District in t ...

, staying there until 1937, when they moved to

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

. After the

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, ), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "German Question, Greater Germany") arose after t ...

the family used their Romanian passports to leave Austria on June 8, 1938, and moved to Italy, while waiting to receive immigration certificates to emigrate to

Mandatory Palestine Mandatory Palestine was a British Empire, British geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the Palestine (region), region of Palestine, and after 1922, under the terms of the League of Nations's Mandate for Palestine. After ...

. After one month in

Trieste Trieste ( , ; ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital and largest city of the Regions of Italy#Autonomous regions with special statute, autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, as well as of the Province of Trieste, ...

the documents arrived, and they moved to

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

. Clara studied at the teachers seminary and worked for seven years as an elementary school teacher. In 1945 she started studying biology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, after being inspired by hearing a lecture on the topic from

Yeshayahu Leibowitz Yeshayahu Leibowitz (; 29 January 1903 – 18 August 1994) was an Israeli Orthodox Jewish public intellectual and polymath. He was a professor of biochemistry, organic chemistry, and neurophysiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a ...

.Heyn, Chaia Clara (1924-1998)

JSTOR JSTOR ( ; short for ''Journal Storage'') is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources founded in 1994. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary source ...

In 1946 she married Zalman Heyn, who was a poet and a songwriter, as well as the first spokesman and head of public relations at the Ministry of Labor. They had two children. During the War of Independence, she had to stop her studies and participated in the

Haganah Haganah ( , ) was the main Zionist political violence, Zionist paramilitary organization that operated for the Yishuv in the Mandatory Palestine, British Mandate for Palestine. It was founded in 1920 to defend the Yishuv's presence in the reg ...

activities and later served also in the

Israel Defence Forces The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; , ), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym (), is the national military of the State of Israel. It consists of three service branches: the Israeli Ground Forces, the Israeli Air Force, an ...

. After the war, she competed her M.Sc. in botany (cytotaxonomy) in 1954 under the supervision of Naomi Feinbrun. During her studies, Heyn also taught at the

Hebrew University Secondary School Hebrew University High School (), commonly known as ''Leyada'' (literally "next to"), is a semi-private high school in Jerusalem, established in 1935 by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The school is located next to the Givat Ram campus of th ...

from 1950 to 1953. Heyn continued to study for a doctorate, which she completed in 1960. Her dissertation was on the “Monographic revision of annual species of Medicago L. in the sections Spirocarpos Ser. and Orbiculares Urb.” under the supervision of Naomi Feinburn and

Michael Zohary Michael Zohary (; born 9 April 1898 in Bóbrka, Galicia (Austria-Hungary); died 16 April 1983 in Jerusalem) was a pioneering Israeli botanist. Biography Michael Schein (later Zohary) was born into a Jewish family in Bóbrka, near Lviv (then Aus ...

. She than published a book based on that dissertation.

Scientific career

Her research focused on the family

Leguminosae Fabaceae () or Leguminosae,International Code of Nomen ...

, and especially the genus

Medicago ''Medicago'' is a genus of flowering plants, commonly known as medick or burclover, in the legume family (Fabaceae). It contains at least 87 species and is distributed mainly around the Mediterranean Basin, and extending across temperate Eurasia ...

. In addition to Medicago, some of the genera she studied in depth were Trigonella, Lotus, Onobrychys, Lupinus, Prangos, Heptaptera and Calendula. In 1962, she became part of the department of botany in the Hebrew University In Jerusalem and in 1978 finally received the rank of a full professor. Between 1969 and 1997 she managed the university's

Herbarium A herbarium (plural: herbaria) is a collection of preserved plant biological specimen, specimens and associated data used for scientific study. The specimens may be whole plants or plant parts; these will usually be in dried form mounted on a sh ...

. and was instrumental in computerization of the herbarium's collections, starting from 1980. From 1993 to 1998 Heyn was the head of the committee of Naming Israeli

flora Flora (: floras or florae) is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous (ecology), indigenous) native plant, native plants. The corresponding term for animals is ''fauna'', and for f ...

of the

Academy of the Hebrew Language The Academy of the Hebrew Language (, ''ha-akademyah la-lashon ha-ivrit'') was established by the Israeli government in 1953 as the "supreme institution for scholarship on the Hebrew language in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem of Givat Ram cam ...

, dedicated to determining Hebrew names to many of the local flora. Heyn was one of the founders of the Organisation for the Taxonomic Investigation of the Mediterranean Area (OPTIMA) in 1974, and served on its board and executive council until 1993. She received the OPTIMA gold medal in 1995. Heyn's research included the systematics and evolution of plants, moving into

pollination Pollination is the transfer of pollen from an anther of a plant to the stigma (botany), stigma of a plant, later enabling fertilisation and the production of seeds. Pollinating agents can be animals such as insects, for example bees, beetles or bu ...

biology by the 1980s. Later in life, she studied the

moss Mosses are small, non-vascular plant, non-vascular flowerless plants in the taxonomic phylum, division Bryophyta (, ) ''sensu stricto''. Bryophyta (''sensu lato'', Wilhelm Philippe Schimper, Schimp. 1879) may also refer to the parent group bryo ...

es of Israel, in collaboration with Dr. Ilana Herrnstadt. Her last book ''Bryophyte Flora of Israel'' was published posthumously in 2004 (with Ilana Herrnstadt, Hélène Bischler and Suzanne Jovet-Ast). Heyn died from cancer on December 27, 1998. Three taxa are named after her: ''Medicago'' sect. ''Heynianae'' Greuter; ''Medicago heynianae'' Greuter; and ''Prangus'' subg. ''Heynia'' Pimenov & V. H. Tikhom.* Ilana Hermstadt & Daniel Zohary
C. Clara Heyn (1924-1998)
Flora Mediterranea 9 - 1999

Books

* Chaia Clara Heyn, The annual species of Medicago, Magnes Press, 1963 * M. Zohary, C.C. Heyn, D. Heller, Conspectus florae orientalis : an annotated catalogue of the flora of the Middle East,

Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, based in Jerusalem, was established in 1961 by the State of Israel to foster contact between Israeli scholars in the sciences and humanities and create a think tank for advising the government on res ...

, 1980-1994 * C. Clara Heyn and Ilana Herrnstadt, editors, The Bryophyte flora of Israel and adjacent regions, Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2004 * Heyn also wrote botany articles of the

Encyclopaedia Hebraica The ''Encyclopaedia Hebraica'' () is a comprehensive encyclopedia in the Hebrew language that was published in the latter half of the 20th century.ha-Entsiklopediyah ha-ʻivrit (האנציקלופדיה העברית) / ''Encyclopaedia Hebraica' ...

References

External links

list of publications by Clara Heyn
* A. M. Mayer
C. Clara Heyn 1924–1998: In Memoriam
Israel Journal of Plant Sciences, Volume 47, 1999 - Issue 2
Heyn, Chaia Clara (1924-1998)

* Ilana Hermstadt & Daniel Zohary
C. Clara Heyn (1924-1998)
Flora Mediterranea 9 - 1999 * Nir L. Gil-ad and Ilana Herrnstadt
C. Clara Heyn (1924-1998)
Taxon Vol. 48, No. 2 (May, 1999), pp. 427–430 {{DEFAULTSORT:Heyn, Clara Israeli botanists Israeli women scientists Academic staff of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1924 births 1998 deaths Romanian emigrants to Austria Jewish emigrants from Austria after the Anschluss to Mandatory Palestine Burials at Har HaMenuchot