Biography

Clara Heyn was a Professor of Botany at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she helped to build up the herbarium and served as a popular teacher.

Heyn (née Blau) was born in Cluj, Romania, moving with her family to Baden, Austria, in 1931, and then to Vienna in 1937. In the time of the Anschluss, they relocated to British Mandate Palestine.

In Palestine Heyn trained as a teacher and worked in a primary school for seven years. She married Zalman Heyn, a government spokesperson, in 1946. They had two children.

In the year before her marriage, Heyn had attended a lecture by Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903-1994), which inspired her to study biology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her plans were interrupted by the Israeli War of Independence (1947-1949), during which she served in the Defence Forces. Returning to university, she completed an MSc in botany, focusing on cytotaxonomy, in 1954, and in 1960 published her PhD thesis, "A monographic revision of annual species of Medicago L. in the sections Spirocarpus Ser. and Orbiculares Urb." The genus Medicago and the legume family continued to be her main area of expertise. She also published work on the Umbelliferae and Compositae.

Heyn joined the staff of the Hebrew University in 1962, being promoted to full professor in 1978. She directed the university herbarium from 1969-1997, launching a computerised database of its collections in 1980.

In the 1970s Heyn began studying mosses with Dr. Ilana Herrnstadt, while in the 1980s she turned her attentions to pollination biology. She contributed to many regional floras, including the Flora of Turkey and the East Aegean Islands and Flora Iranica.

Heyn was one of the founders of Optima, the organisation of Mediterranean Sea botanists, in 1974, and was awarded its gold medal in 1995. She also served on many other academic boards and committees.

While suffering with cancer in her old age, Heyn continued to work on the Bryophyte Flora of Israel, which was published posthumously in 2004 (with Ilana Herrnstadt, Helene Bischler and Suzanne Jovet-Ast). Heyn died on 27 December 1998.

Sources:
N. Kirsh, 2006, "Clara Heyn, 1924-1998", Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia:
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/heyn-clara, accessed 4 July 2012
N.L. Gil-ad and I. Herrnstadt, 1999, "C. Clara Heyn (1924-1998)", Taxon, 48(2): 427-430
I. Herrnstadt & D. Zohary, 1999, "C. Clara Heyn (1924-1998), Flora Mediterranea, 9: 11-16.