Elmar Leppik

Elmar Emil Leppik, earlier Lepik (1898–1978) was an Estonian mycologist and theoretical biologist. He established a mycological herbarium and library at the University of Tartu.[1] His birth date in 1898 has been given variously as 3 or 4 October or as 3 December, he died 4 November 1978 in Maryland.

Elmar Leppik
Elmar Emil Leppik
Born	3 December 1898 (1898-12-03) Jõgeva Parish Estonia
Died	1978 (aged 79–80)
Known for	Established a mycological herbarium and library at the University of Tartu
Scientific career
Fields	Mycology
Institutions	Rockefeller Foundation
Thesis	(1928)
Author abbrev. (botany)	Leppik

Leppik, the son of a farmer, was born in Jõgeva Parish, a rural municipality of Estonia north of Tartu. During his student years, he was interested in both mycology and algology. Following graduation, Leppik was a fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation and later the University of Tartu. Among his instructors were the prominent mycologists Eduard Fischer and Ernst Albert Gäumann. He earned his PhD in 1928 in Zürich before returning to Estonia to work at University of Tartu. There, he was employed first as Acting Assistant Professor (1929–1931), then Assistant Professor (1931–1938), Professor Extraordinary (1938–1942), and finally Professor (1942–1944).[1]

In 1950 he moved to the United States, where he taught for the first seven years at the Augustana University in South Dakota and worked as a research scientist at the Hormel Institute at the University of Minnesota. In 1964 he moved to Beltsville, Maryland, where he would stay for the rest of his life. His interests during this time shifted towards the phylogeny of flowering plants and fungi, evolutionary classification of flower species, plant coevolution, insect pollination, and bee biology.[1]