Biography

Swiss-Argentinian geneticist. Juan Hunziker was concerned with the study of cell structures and chromosomes in plants and was a highly influential cytogeneticist and botanist in South America. Born into a poor Swiss family he was determined to gain a university education and graduated in 1949 from the University of Buenos Aires as an agricultural engineer. He specialised in the taxonomy of the genus Ephedra. Thanks to a fellowship from the foundation "Rotaria" he was able to continue his studies in the United States of America where he gained a masters degree (1952) and a PhD (1959) in genetics from the University of California. His thesis was entitled "Hybridisation and Polyploidy in some South American species of Agropyron (Gramineae)". During this time he married Homayountaj Mortazavi, an Iranian that he met in Berkley when she was studying for an arts degree. In 1946 he returned to Argentina and began to teach at the Veterinary and Agricultural Faculties of the University of Buenos Aires, in the areas of botany, agriculture, phytogeography and plant physiology. Later in 1958 Hunziker would become a researcher, first at the Institute of Agricultural Technology and then at the National Council of Investigation in Science and Technology (CONICET).

His interests were always in the field of cytogenetics, predominantly in plants but also in insects. In the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences in 1970 he was responsible for creating the first course in Argentina for the study of genetic evolution and throughout his time as a researcher he continued to guide students in their theses. He has won many awards, including the 'Diploma Honor al Merit' from the University of la Plana in 1977 and a prize in genetics from Konex in 1983; he has also been a Guggenheim fellow three times. At the first symposium of the Fourth Congress of Cytogenetics and Plant Evolution he was acknowledged and received an award for his impressive contribution to the field.

Director of the Darwinian Institute of Botany between 1983 and 1998, Hunziker organised many publications and was responsible for the creation of several laboratories including one specifically for the study of cytogenetics. He collected in Argentina and abroad, amassing some 14,000 specimens, and published often in his field. Hunziker and his wife had three children, all of whom moved to Switzerland to pursue their careers there. He was known for having a strong spirit and a great love of life, which helped him to survive through 17 years of lung cancer. Before he died he published what he considered his most important work, the 'Permanent translocation heterozygosity in dioecious Baccharis cordifolia (Asteraceae)'.