Joseph Pantocsek, Jr.

* Nagyszombat, October 15, 1846 – † Tavarnok (Nagytapolcsány), September 4, 1916 / physician, botanist, micropaleontologist ; ; The son of József Pantocsek Sr. (Nagytapolcsány, January 4, 1799 – Bratislava, June 24, 1872), a pharmacist, water analyst, and flora researcher. He began his schooling in Nagytapolcsány, attended high school in Nyitra, then Esztergom. He studied medicine at the university in Göttingen and Vienna. He became a medical doctor in Vienna in 1875, then a district physician in Tavarnok. Between 1896 and 1914, until his retirement, he was the chief physician of the public hospital in Bratislava. He studied botanism from 1866, and in 1872 he studied the flora and fauna of Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Dalmatia for half a year. From 1880 onwards, he mainly researched diatoms and became an internationally renowned scientist in this field. His diatom collection contained about 6,000 specimens. The vast majority of the preparations were sent to the MNM in Budapest, but only 900 survived. They were renovated in 1973. The Balaton diatom species he described, Cyclotella ocellata, became the symbol of the Hungarian Algological Society. Of the more than 1,500 fossil and 1,221 recent diatom species he described, 8 species are currently accepted as original. He was the first to discover several flowering plants. He conducted extensive literature work. He described many new plants, several species bear his name. In Hungary; he was the first to deal with microphotography. He presented his microscopic photographs at the national exhibition in 1885, and at the amateur exhibition in 1890, where he won a gold medal. He wrote the chapter on the flora of the county in the part of Borovszky Samu's county series dealing with Nyitra County. ; ; His main works: ; Annotations ad Floram et Faunam Hercegovinae, Crnagorae et Dalmatiae, 1874, ; Beiträge zur Kenntniss der fossilen Bacillarien Ungarns I – III., 1886–1892, ; Die Bacillarien als Gesteinsbildner und Altersbestimmer, 1894, ; Data on the moss flora of Nyitra County, 1899, ; Data on the moss flora of the city and region of Bratislava, 1902, ; The diatoms of Lake Balaton, 1902, ; The fine andesite tuff of Sliač, Bacillariai, 1903; The diatom flora of Lake Fertő, 1912.