I am a geneticist with a keen interest in plants. I was awarded my PhD for mathematical sciences (Biology and Genetics) from Leiden University in 1976. I was investigator and lecturer of genetics for 35 years. Then I moved for about 7 years to the National Herbarium in Leiden I made botanical expeditions to China, Kazakhstan, South Africa, Mexico and Japan.
Keywords
Botany, genome size, Aspergillus, Klyuveromyces.
Researchinterest
I was always interested in genetics. I started my career with investigating fruit body formation in the fungus Aspergillus nidulans for 15 years. The next 15 years I worked on isolating centromeres from the yeast Klyuveromyces.
The last 23 years I measured genome size in plants, using that as an important taxonomic character. In the latter function I have published papers on about 20 different plant genera including Helleborus, Narcisssus, Tulipa, Galanthus, Cycas, Hepatica, Araucaria, conifers etc. A large publication was measuring genome sizes of nearly the whole Dutch flora with 2350 species in 2019.
Keypublications
In total I published 298 papers with total of 2394 citations, mostly in scientific journal but also regularly in specialized semi scientific journals like e,g, the American Hosta journal, Bulletin of the Alpine garden soc., Succulenta etc.
Nearly all publications can be found at Research Gate
Short CV
18-10-1940: Born, Noordwijk
1962-1968: Biology study Leiden university (3 years as candidate assistent)
1974-1975: Sabbatical year at university of Kent at Canterbury with Aspergillus
1976: Phd Leiden University on Fruit body in fungus Aspergillus
1976-2001: Researcher and lecturer at Genetics department (about 15 years with Aspergillus and 15 years with milk yeast Kluyveromyces and in that period 4 years Chairman of department of Genetics and about 3 years in examen committee).
2001-2024: Honorary investigator since 2001 for 23 years