Pius Font i Quer

Pius Font i Quer (1888 – 1964) was a Catalan botanist, pharmacist and chemist.^{[1][citation needed]}

In this Catalan name, the first or paternal surname is Font.

Font in 1929

Biography

Born in 1888, in Lleida, Font organized the Institut Botànic de Barcelona and founded Jardí Botànic in this city. In 1911 he joined the Health Military Corporation,^[2] in which he was given the military rank of tinent coronel farmacèutic. He was on a botanic expedition in Albarracín (Aragon) with his fellowship when the Francisco Franco's 1936 coup d'état failed and began the Spanish Civil War. When he want back to Barcelona, he had to go through the war front; for this the reason he was accused of being a member of the military rebellion and lost all his honours, which made continuation of his scientific work difficult.^[3]

Font was president of the Institució Catalana d'Història Natural (1931–1934), president of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans in 1958 and of the Société Botanique at Geneve, honour vice president of the International Botany Congresses at Paris (1954) and Edinburgh (1964) and doctor honoris causa at the University of Montpellier. He died in 1964, in Barcelona.

Font was the main creator of scientific botanical terminology in Catalan and Spanish. His most well-known works are: Diccionario de Botánica (1953), which is the reference work for botany students in Spain; Plantas medicinales (1961); and Botánica pintoresca (1958). His research took place in Spain, but specially in Catalonia, southern Valencian Community and the Balearic Islands, mainly in Ibiza and Formentera. Pius Font i Quer distributed several exsiccata works under the titles Iter Maroccanum: 1927–1930, Flora Iberica selecta (1934–1935) and Flora Hispánica, Herbario normal (1944–1954).^[4][5][6][7]

Some species and subspecies have been named in honour of Font and bear the species epithet fontqueri.