Margalith Galun was an Israeli lichenologist. She established the Israeli collection of lichens at Tel Aviv University. Founder of the academic journal Symbiosis, she served as its editor-in-chief between 1985 and 2006.The International Association for Lichenology grants an an award which bears her name to honor scholarship at their quadrennial symposium.
Background
Melitta Katz was born in Austria. Originally from Lviv, her father was a merchant and was involved in the Zionist and socialist movements.After completing her elementary school in Vienna and beginning her gymnasium studies, her family decided to immigrate in 1938. They were unsuccessful in leaving Austria and to get their daughter out of the country Melitta was adopted by a Jewish-Swiss family, changing her name to Margalith, in 1939. Her parents were eventually able to join their daughter in Switzerland and in October of that year, the family immigrated to Palestine.
Education
Margalith completed her secondary studies in Tel Aviv at Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium in 1946, and went to live and work at the kibbutz of Kfar Giladi for several months. When her mother died, she returned to Tel Aviv to be with her father and enrolled in courses at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1947. Within a month, the 1947–1949 Palestine war began and Katz interrupted her studies to join the Israel Defense Forces. When the conflict ended in 1949, she returned to her classes and completed her undergraduate degree in 1952, going on to earn a master's degree in botany in 1954.
Joining her husband in Pasadena, California, Galun conducted research at the California Institute of Technology from 1961 to 1962. Returning to Rehovot, she was employed at the Israel Institute for Biological Research in Ness Ziona from 1962 to 1965, receiving a research grant from the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. In 1965, she was hired as a lecturer in the botany department at Tel Aviv University. She worked her way up the ladder, being promoted to senior lecturer in 1969, associate professor in 1971, and to professor in 1977.
Simultaneously with her teaching, Galun conducted research on lichens. Establishing a research group, Galun led her students to collect samples and create the collection of lichens from throughout Israel for the university. Eventually their collection became international, including samples from many other countries.Initially her own research focused on identifying the varieties of lichen in Israel, but soon turned her attention to vegetative tissue, or thallus, to evaluate the interaction between algae and fungus during its formation. Studying the signalling molecules with electron microscopy, she wrote over 90 papers about lichen symbiosis and the absorption of metals by lichens, becoming "recognized as one of the world's foremost lichenologists".
