Elix, John Alan (Jack)   (1941 - )

The first lichen collected by Jack Elix was Pseudocyphellaria crocata, a luxuriant, leafy species from Molonglo Gorge Reserve in the Australian Capital Territory in January 1971 (JAE-001; CANB). Subsequently, he explored most corners of Australia and many regions beyond, building a 50,000 specimen collection of highest-quality specimens now held in the Australian National Herbarium (CANB).

Since his formal retirement as Professor in Chemistry at the Australian National University in 2002, Jack's productivity blossomed. Freed from administrative and teaching duties, he took on and completed many small and large, solitary and collaborative projects, resulting in more than 330 peer-reviewed publications.

Jack's contributions to lichen chemistry are many-faceted. He started life as an organic chemist. He was on a CSIRO Fellowship to Cambridge in 1966 where he shared a bench with a colleague working on lichen products, and compared to that, he found his own work boring. So he went to the library to find out more on lichens, but found nothing there because it was a chemistry library. However, in a local book shop he managed to find a second hand copy of Mason Hale's seminal work, How to Know Lichens. This book at least had one chapter on very basic lichen chemistry. On his return to Australia, Jack attended a third year semester course at ANU on lichens, offered by a visiting Scandinavian lichenologist, Eilif Dahl. This got him started. It was a period when lichen compounds were starting to be used to assist identification, and the first stirrings of a resurgence in Australian lichenology were happening.

Jack's first taxonomic project was revising the genus Hypogymnia for Australia, published in 1979. From Hypogymnia he moved to other genera of the Parmeliaceae, with a specific interest in Xanthoparmelia.

The critical contribution Jack made to lichen chemistry is that he helped to shift the science from ad hoc observations of simple colour reactions or even movements of spots on a tlc plate to actually understanding what the compounds were and how they were biosynthetically related. In this he collaborated with other lichen chemists around the world, most notably such 'greats' as Chicita Culberson in the USA and Siegfried Huneck in what was then East Germany. Jack was a key player on the world stage in bringing lichen chemotaxonomy into general use.

Jack's greatest contribution was his refining and standardising the application of high- performance liquid chromatography (hplc) to lichens. He developed a library of spectra of known lichen compounds, and then with the help of a computer whiz colleague, Hector Rodriguez, modified a commercial application so that a computer could match spectra of unknown samples against the library.

I hope you have not formed the impression that Jack just sits in a chemistry lab wearing a white lab coat. He is happiest in the field collecting specimens, preferably with close friends, wearing his trade-mark hat that mysteriously never blows off and never gets crushed. He has amassed many thousands of specimens from all States and Territories, as well as places like Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island.

Source: Extracted from:
P.M. McCarthy (2015) 'John Alan ("Jack") Elix: Nominee for the 2015 Nancy T. Burbidge Medal', ASBS Newsletter 165 (December 2015) p.34-36
G. Kantvilas (2015) 'Nancy Burbidge Lecture 2015: Jack Elix and Australian lichenology', ASBS Newsletter 165 (December 2015) p.37-43
Portrait Photo: 2015 ASBS Conference, M.Fagg, extracted from PC020153.jpg

Collecting localities for 'Elix, J.A.' from AVH (2022)

Data from 49,547 specimens