Fuchs collection
The botany library of Hans Peter Fuchs-Eckert
Hans Peter Fuchs was born in Basel in 1928. During his studies at Basel University he explored the flora and vegetation of Alta Valle Formazza. This contributed essentially to charting the Swiss flora. He graduated in mathematics and natural sciences in 1958. However, his main interest was botany. He wrote his doctoral thesis on quillwort species, which he continued exploring in in Europe and South America for the rest of his life. He even pioneered in describing 34 quillwort taxa. Between 1960 and 1970 he worked as a palynologist for Shell and lived in the Netherlands with his family.
In 1972 they moved to Trin-Vitg in the Swiss canton of Grisons. Apart from teaching biology and running the local office for refugees in Chur he did research at botanical institutes in Washington D.C., New York, Saint-Louis, Geneva, and Leiden. On top of that he specialized in herbaries at the universities of Torino, Milan, Pavia, Modena, Bologna, Florence, Rome, and at the Collegio Rosmini in Domodossola. His main focus was on specimens from Formazza - or rather the Verbano Cusio Ossola province. Moreover he participated in scientific expeditions to Borneo (1963) and Colombia (1967). He was a well-renowned plant taxonomist and an expert in systematics and taxonomy in Switzerland.
His fascination of historical botany resulted in several publications on botanists and their achievements, especially on the Bauhin academic dynasty. Hans Peter Fuchs died on June 8, 1999 at the age of 71. His extremely valuable and carefully curated collection is harbored by the University Library of Berne. It comprises more than 2.000 volumes covering four centuries and can be researched in the catalog.