Gábor Bohus (1914–2005) was a Hungarian mycologist born on 4 July 1914 in Budapest.
Early life
Gábor Bohus was born to Paula Kitschalesz and Róbert Bohus on 4 July 1914. Paula maintained a garden at home and Róbert was a student of László Szemere's mushroom study course so Gábor was exposed to the plants and mushrooms that he would spend his life studying from a young age. He graduated from the Lutheran high school in Fasor and went on to study at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the Pázmány Péter University from 1932 to 1937 where he studied botany, chemistry and mineralogy. His 1937 doctoral dissertation explored artificial breeding of Clasterosporium carpophilum with mushrooms.
Gábor then joined the Museum of Natural Sciences in 1937 and became an unpaid intern at the botanical garden before being granted a scholarship. Between 1938 and 1945 he was called up for military service several times and spent a total of 45 months in service however he continued his research into mushrooms during the war and kept a microscope with him even whilst in service. Despite his military service he was still able to publish dozens of papers during this time.
Career
Gábor became the deputy head of the Botanical Garden at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences after World War II but the mushroom collection had been lost, despite being removed to the countryside to try to prevent it from being destroyed by bombing. He therefore set to rebuilding the collection of preserved specimens along with Lórántné Babos and developed the modified Herpell method of preserving mushroom specimens. Margit Babos worked under Bohus and used this method to prepare over 20,000 mushroom specimens for the macrofungi collection. This method is still used by the Hungarian Natural History Museum today and a large amount of the macroscopic fungi specimens it holds were prepared by Bohus and Babos.
Gábor worked at the botanical gardens and museum for nearly 68 years before retiring in 1974 due to hearing loss caused by high blood pressure. He continued to regularly visit and work with mushrooms until his death in 2005 aged 90.
Species described
Bohus published numerous papers on Agaricus species and was responsible for describing many species including:
Agaricus annulospecialis
Agaricus babosiae
Agaricus bernardiiformis
Agaricus bobosi
Agaricus bresadolanus
Agaricus cappellii
Agaricus macrosporoides
Agaricus pseudoumbrella
Agaricus silvicolae-similis
Armillaria rickenii
Coprinus mitrisporus
Cortinarius ammophiloides
Cortinarius diabolicorigens
Cortinarius moserianus
Cortinarius paracephalixus
Cortinarius parfumatus
Cortinarius subcompar
Hebeloma ammophilum
Hebeloma ochroalbidum
Hebeloma psammicola
Lepista irinoides
Psalliota pseudopratensis
The species variant Tricholoma populinum var. bohusii is named for Gábor Bohus as a commemoration of his work in Hungarian mycology. Other species named for Bohus include Lepista bohusii which was described based on Bohus' variant Lepista luscina var. irinoides, Agaricus bohusii and Leucoagaricus bohusii (originally Leucocoprinus bohusi).
Publications
During his life Bohus authored or co-authored a number of books and journals on plants and mushrooms. This is a partial list: