Australian medical practitioner and radiologist. Flecker was also a keen naturalist, especially contributing to the field of botany in northern Queensland. Hugo Flecker was born in Adelaide, where as a boy he excelled in music despite congenital hearing problems. He began studying medicine at the University of Adelaide in 1904, but transferred to the University of Sydney, where he qualified in 1908. Thereafter he worked at the university and at two hospitals in the city. In 1911 he travelled to Britain to take further medical training before enlisting in the Australian Imperial Force in 1914. His World War One service came to an end in 1917, in which year he married Thelma Arnold. He then began a medical practice in Temora, New South Wales. At the beginning of the 1920s he set up as a radiotherapist in Melbourne, moving to Cairns in 1932. He gained his diploma in radiology in 1937 and became a fellow of the Faculty of Radiology (England) in 1939.

In Cairns Flecker became the first president of the North Queensland Naturalists' Club and helped to build up its herbarium (CAIRNS) to comprise 11,000 specimens by the time of his death. Between 1933 and 1948 he co-ordinated the club's census of native plants in the area. The CAIRNS collection was transferred to QRS in 1971 and its bryophytes to CANB in 1981. Among his other interests were toxicology and zoology and he achieved fame with his research into jellyfish poisoning (in the 1940s Flecker identified box jellyfish as the cause of unexplained deaths of swimmers).

At least six plant species were named in honour of Flecker, including Acacia fleckeri Pedley (basionym of Racosperma fleckeri (Pedley) Pedley) and the rare orchid Dendrobium fleckeri Rupp & C.T.White (basionym of Thelychiton fleckeri (Rupp & C.T.White) M.AClem & D.L.Jones), found on Mount Bellenden Ker. He was a member of the Queensland branch of the British Medical Association, the Australian and New Zealand Association of Radiologists and a prominent Freemason. He was also a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, which posthumously awarded him its J.P. Thomson medal. The Flecker Botanical Gardens at Cairns are named after him.

Sources:
J.R. Clarkson, 1990, "Hugo Flecker and the North Queensland Naturalist's Club", in P.S. Short (ed.), History of Systematic Botany in Australia: 171-175
J.H. Pearn, 1996, "Flecker, Hugo (1884-1957)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, 14: 182-184
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