It is a very great pleasure to inform that the IAWA Council elected Prof. Dr. Fritz Schweingruber as an Honorary Member of our Association in June of 2018, following his nomination by two individual members Dr. Pieter Baas and Dr. Ute Sass-Klaassen.
 
According to the IAWA Constitution, “Candidates for Honorary Membership shall either be nominated in writing by two Members of the Association and admission to this category of Membership in this manner shall be controlled by the Council, or such candidates may be considered for Membership at international open meetings of the Association where a majority vote shall be considered binding”. The IAWA Council and nominators have considered that Dr. Schweingruber’s papers and books on wood anatomy and tree ring studies are indeed a very major contribution to our field, and also that through his tireless efforts to teach young generations of wood anatomists and dendrochronologists from all over the world he has done more than any other person to keep our discipline alive and vibrant. He is a distinguished scientist in the research field of wood anatomy and dendrochronology. His great contribution to the community of wood anatomy is worthy to be highly respected.
 
We are very grateful for all Dr. Schweingruber has done for wood anatomy and wood anatomists, and hope he will accept this special honour, which entitles him to free membership and subscription to the IAWA Journal. We will mark his Honorary Membership at one of IAWA future meetings.
 
The curriculum of Prof. Dr. Fritz Schweingruber is as below.


Fritz Hans Schweingruber was born in Krauchthal, 1936. PhD in plant sociology (Prof. M. Welten) in the Alps and habilitation on prehistoric wood (Prof. H. Zoller). 1971 installation of the dendrochronological laboratory at the Research Institute for Forest at Birmensdorf, Switzerland. Extraordinary professor at the institute of Botany at the University of Basel. Training of more than hundred students in wood anatomy and dendrochronology from the Universities of Basel. Zürich, Bern, Stuttgart, Grenoble, Teheran. Two sabbatical years by Hal Fritts and Brian Bannister at the tree Ring Lab at Tucson USA. During the next 25 years working on the Northern Hermispheric Dendroclimatological Network together with Keith Briffa Norwich, Eugene Vaganov and Stepan Shiyatov, Russia. Organisation of 20 expeditions in Western Europe, USA, Canada and Russia. All densitometric hemispheric dendroclimatological data are a free available from the Int. Tree-Ring Databank. Self-made man in wood anatomy. Establishment and direction of the dendroeclogical field weeks (1986) and the dendroanatomical weeks (2001). Retired since 2001 with right to hospitality at the Research Institute and concentration on the age and anatomy of herbs. See Xylem Databank with approximately 3000 species in the internet: https://www.wsl.ch/dendropro/xylemdb/. Publication of textbooks: Tree Rings, Dendroecology, Wood structure and Environment, European wood anatomy and the Plant stem 2018.