Roger Jean Heim

Roger Heim (February 12, 1900 – September 17, 1979) was a French botanist specialising in mycology and tropical phytopathology. He was known for his studies describing the anatomy of the mushroom hymenium, the systematics and phylogeny of higher fungi (especially the related genera Lactarius and Russula, the Russulales and Secotium), the mycology of tropical fungi such as Termitomyces, as well as ethnomycological work on hallucinogenic fungi, like Psilocybe and Stropharia. In his career, he published over 560 articles, scientific reviews, and major works in fields like botany, chemistry, education, forestry, horticulture, liberal arts, medicine and zoology. Career After his secondary education at the Chaptal high school, his father, who was a state railway engineer, pushed him to join the Central School of Arts and Manufactures ("Centrale"), one of the oldest and most prestigious engineering schools in France. At the same time he attended the cryptogamy laboratory of the National Museum of Natural History, he entered Centrale in 1920 and followed a course in chemical engineering, certainly because this path would enable him, once he had obtained his diploma, to take up the biology course. He became secretary of the Botanical Society of France in 1922, and graduated from the Ecole Centrale in 1923. Once his father's requirements were met, he returned to his original vocation and obtained a degree in natural sciences in 1924. He then became curator at the Institut botanique du Lautaret. From 1926 onwards, he was in charge of a series of botanical missions that would take him throughout Europe and Africa. After a stint at the Pasteur Institute, Roger Heim became assistant to Professor Louis Mangin, holder of the chair of cryptogamy at the National Museum of Natural History, and in 1931 he defended a doctoral thesis on the Inocybe genus. In 1933, he was appointed deputy director of the National Museum of Natural History cryptogamy laboratory. In 1936, he created the Revue de mycologie. President of the Society of Plant Pathology and Agricultural Entomology of France in 1936, he was appointed Secretary of the National Committee for the Protection of Nature in the Overseas Territories of France in 1938. He developed an interest in tropical mycology, tropical plant pathology and termite mound fungi in Black Africa.