Roland Ernst Beschel (9 August 1928,

Salzburg, Austria Salzburg is the fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020 its population was 156,852. The city lies on the Salzach River, near the border with Germany and at the foot of the Alps mountains. The town occupies the site of the Roman settlement ...

– 22 January 1971,

Kingston, Ontario Kingston is a city in Ontario, Canada, on the northeastern end of Lake Ontario. It is at the beginning of the St. Lawrence River and at the mouth of the Cataraqui River, the south end of the Rideau Canal. Kingston is near the Thousand Islands, ...

) was an Austrian botanist, lichenologist, professor, and herbarium director, known for his famous doctoral thesis and subsequent research on

lichenometry In archaeology, palaeontology, and geomorphology, lichenometry is a geomorphic method of geochronologic dating that uses lichen growth to determine the age of exposed rock, based on a presumed specific rate of increase in radial size over time ...

. Beschel received in 1950 a doctorate in botany and physical geography from the

University of Innsbruck The University of Innsbruck (; ) is a public research university in Innsbruck, the capital of the Austrian federal state of Tyrol (state), Tyrol, founded on October 15, 1669. It is the largest education facility in the Austrian States of Austria, ...

, with a pioneering thesis on the ecology and growth of lichens and the use of lichen measurements to give dates for rock surface exposure. He taught at the

Institut auf dem Rosenberg Institut auf dem Rosenberg is a private International school, international boarding school located near Lake Constance in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Founded in 1889, it is one of the oldest boarding schools in Switzerland and reportedly the most ex ...

in St. Gallen, Switzerland, until 1955, and then at

Mount Allison University Mount Allison University (also Mount A or MtA) is a Canadian primarily undergraduate liberal arts university located in Sackville, New Brunswick, founded in 1839. Mount Allison was the first university in the British Empire to award a baccal ...

New Brunswick New Brunswick is a Provinces and Territories of Canada, province of Canada, bordering Quebec to the north, Nova Scotia to the east, the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the northeast, the Bay of Fundy to the southeast, and the U.S. state of Maine to ...

. In 1959 Beschel was appointed an assistant professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario and the director of the Fowler Herbarium at Queen's. He was promoted to full professor at Queen's in 1969. The Fowler Herbarium is named after its founder James Fowler, a professor of natural history of Queen's, who retired in 1907 and had no successor as director of the herbarium until the appointment of Beschel in 1959. He was elected a Fellow of the AAAS in 1965. He died suddenly at his home in Kingston at the age of 42. (His successor as director of the Fowler Herbarium was Adele Crowder.)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beschel, Roland Ernst 1928 births 1971 deaths University of Innsbruck alumni Academic staff of Queen's University at Kingston Austrian lichenologists 20th-century Austrian botanists Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science