On the occasion of the retirement of Pierre Compere, his 35-year scientific
career as a phycologist at the National Botanical Garden of Belgium is sum
marized. He mainly worked and published on the freshwater algal flora of tr
opical, mostly African, regions. He also started the publication of the fir
st algal flora of Belgium. Besides his floristic and taxonomic studies, he
has been very much involved in nomenclatural aspects of algae and is still
secretary of the Committee for Algae of the International Association for P
lant Taxonomy. He also remains active on the editorial boards of the Belgia
n Journal of Botany and the phycological journals Cryptogamie, Algologie an
d Diatom Research. His 85 phycological papers published during the period 1
966-1999 are listed along with the algal taxa he described. (C) 2000 Adac/E
ditions scientifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS.