Antonín Vězda

Antonín (Toni) Vězda (25 November 1920 – 10 November 2008) was a Czech lichenologist. After completing a university education that was postponed by World War II, Vězda taught botany at the Czech University of Life Sciences. In 1958, he was dismissed from his university position as a result of the restrictions placed on academic freedoms by the communist regime in power. He eventually was hired as a lichen researcher by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, who allowed him to work from his apartment, which served also as an office and herbarium.

Vězda was a productive worker, publishing nearly 400 scientific papers between 1948 and 2008, most solitarily, describing hundreds of new taxa, and building up a herbarium collection of more than 300,000 specimens. He was praised for his series of exsiccates – sets of dried herbarium specimens – assembled with both local species as well as samples sent to him from colleagues throughout the world. Known as an outstanding lichen taxonomist, he was awarded an Acharius Medal in 1992 for his lifetime contributions to lichenology. Two genera and twenty-four species have been named in honour of Vězda.