Biography

Spanish botanist and chemist from Catalonia, Pio Font Quer (also known by his Catalan name, Pius Font i Quer) worked simultaneously as a research botanist, a teacher and a pharmacist within the military. He travelled much of Iberia, the Balearic Islands and Morocco and while working for the army had the opportunity to study the vegetation of relatively remote regions of his country.

Born in Lerida he grew up in Manresa with his parents and later attended the University of Barcelona, where he graduated with a degree in chemical sciences in 1908. This same year he had the opportunity of assisting Manuel Llenas with botany lectures at the Catalan Institution of Natural History and it was here that he gained an interest in plants. By 1910 the budding pharmacist had also graduated from the same university and, having received the grade 'outstanding' for his work, continued on to doctoral studies.

While working towards his PhD Font Quer's military career began when he entered the pharmacy section of the Military Sanitation Body in 1911. This allowed him to travel much of the country and study its flora, but he remained focused on the region of Bagés and from 1914 wrote his PhD thesis on the phytogeography of this area. At this time he also undertook important expeditions around Barcelona, to the Pyrenees, the western plain of Catalan, the Balearic Islands, Andalucía and north-eastern Spain as well as developing an interest in the floral richness of Valencia.

In 1916 he was named associate naturalist in the herbarium of the Barcelona Museum of Natural Sciences and ended up marrying his assistant, Emilia Civit Bellfort. He was soon named curator of the botany department and under his influence it became a superior centre for research; indeed in 1935 the museum split in two and Font Quer was named director of the new Institute of Botany. Throughout this period of his life he also taught sporadically in a number of academic institutions, including the University of Barcelona's Pharmacy Faculty (1917-1922) and as a professor of botany at the Barcelona Higher School of Agriculture. As a military man his career was also progressing and in 1927 he was sent to work at the military hospital of Rif in Morocco, which again allowed him access to areas relatively unexplored botanically.

By 1931 Font Quer found himself in the military reserve, and, having just been named director of the Botanical Society's summer course, he was collecting with students and assistants in Orihuela del Tremedal when civil war broke out in 1936. Keen to send his students away from danger he arranged for them all to go back home, but, apparently in the wrong place at the wrong time, due to his retreat close to the front line he would end up facing a military tribunal accused of desertion. Imprisoned in the Castle of Montjuïc (Barcelona) from the onset of the war and accused of military rebellion, the Flora Tremedalensis which he was working on at the time had to be abandoned, never to receive publication.

Font Quer was not released until the late 1940s and did not return to any of his previously unfinished work. Instead, still living in Barcelona, he began to work as an editor in the fields of pharmacy, chemistry and natural sciences and created a dictionary of botany (1953) and a catalogue of medicinal plants (1962). In later life he became very ill but still managed to undertake fieldwork and his last expedition was to Portugal in 1963 in order to study the genus Sideritis L. During his life Font Quer studied several other genera in great detail too, including Arenaria L., Cistus L., Digitalis L. and Scabiosa L., creating monographic treatments for each. His dream of creating a Flora Occidental and a Flora Hispánica were thwarted due to the civil war, but he did manage to publish a Flora Catalana as tribute to his many years of hard work.

Sources:
S. Lopez Udias, 1992, Aportaciones botánicos del Dr. Pio Font Quer a la Flora de Alicante, Castellón, Turuel y Valencia.