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Honorary Members The International Association of Vegetation Science has not selected honorary members since the annual meeting in Ceské Budejovice, in 1997. This time – at the annual meeting in Lisbon in 2005 – proposals were made (at the Council meeting) to add three new names to the list: Hartmut Dierschke, Eddy van der Maarel and Salvador Rivas-Martínez. Considering their great service to the organization, it will be no surprise that it was easy to convince the Council to honour these members. The three laudations that were addressed to the audience during the General Assembly are shown below. Laudatio Hartmut Dierschke addressed by Joop Schaminée, Wageningen To honour Hartmut Dierschke it would be possible and maybe even appropriate to give two laudations, one dealing with his scientific work on vegetation science and one for his practical work on behalf of various institutes and organizations, one of which is the International Association for Vegetation Science. It will surprise nobody that the scientific research and output of Hartmut Dierschke, growing up amongst the old masters of phytosociology, Reinhold Tüxen and Heinz Ellenberg, were strongly influenced by them. His work has to be positioned in what can be called the continental European tradition. Grasslands and forests have always drawn his special attention, and the number of papers dealing with these ecosystems is really impressive. Quite a lot of these publications do have a syntaxonomic purpose, but the scope is always much broader, presenting new and original information on the ecology, spatial variation and dynamics of these ecosystems. The magnum opus of Hartmut Dierschke is definitely his handbook on vegetation science, published in 1996, entitled Pflanzensoziologie – Grundlagen und Methoden. With regard to the International Association for Vegetation Science, the achievements of Hartmut Dierschke can simply be summarized in one sentence: he has been the heart of the IAVS for many, many years. In his capacity as Secretary General, he has written hundreds of letters and given his support to the organizers of the annual IAVS symposia und excursions for a period of 16 years, from 1983 until 1998. In 1997 he started the series of IAVS Bulletins. He has also been Treasurer of the association during that same period and even somewhat longer, until 2002, and has kept our organization financially sound. Being his successor as Secretary General, it is a great and personal pleasure for me to welcome Hartmut Dierschke as an Honorary Member of the International Association for Vegetation Science. Laudatio Eddy van der Maarel addressed by Ladislav Mucina, Stellenbosch Professor Eddy van der Maarel (or ‘Eddy’ as he is known to a large family of vegetation scientists, plant ecologists and nature conservationists on six continents) was born in 1934 in Amsterdam. He spent the first part of his career studying and working in The Netherlands – at the universities of Amsterdam, Groningen and Nijmegen, until 1981 when he moved to Uppsala (Sweden) to assume the most prestigious (and definitely the oldest) chair in plant ecology. He returned to his native country after his retirement, where he had already became associated with the University of Groningen once again. His name is connected to a period of great crossing-over in vegetation science. Great minds like Robert Whittaker, Victor Westhoff and Eddy catalysed a great renaissance in vegetation science which brought together various approaches to vegetation on the platform of modern science. The chapter by Westhoff & van der Maarel on the Braun-Blanquet approach in Whittaker’s volume on Ordination and Classification of Communities and the recent book on Vegetation Ecology edited by Eddy are landmarks of this renaissance. Building bridges, and mediating and initiating collaboration have always been most typical activities the name of Eddy is associated with. Friendship through and for science, respect for other people and their opinions, his deep interest in other cultures and languages are the most typical features of his personality. Many of us cherish great friendship with Eddy and his wife Marijke (the equally great woman behind the great man). He devoted much of his life to furthering opportunities of all of us to communicate the results of our work. Eddy’s contribution to our science as long-time Editor-in-Chief of Vegetatio and then the foundation of the Journal of Vegetation Science and Applied Vegetation Science are legendary. He has been one of the founding members of the very successful Working Group on Data Processing in Phytosociology, later the Working Group for Theoretical Vegetation Science. He also served for more than 20 years as a member of the Advisory Council, and more recently as Vice-President of IAVS. Eddy has been an active member of our Society for 45 years. It makes us always proud to hear that his work has been met with appreciation and recognition. Eddy is elected member of the prestigious Royal Academy of Sciences of The Netherlands and the Royal Swedish Academy, as well as honorary member of the Royal Botanical Society of The Netherlands and the British Ecological Society. In 2004, Eddy received the knighthood in the order of the Dutch Lion from Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands to recognize his life-time work. The Honorary Membership is the highest recognition our learned Society bestowes – and one for Eddy has been long overdue. Laudatio Salvador Rivas-Martínez addressed by Javier Loidi, Bilbao Salvador Rivas-Martínez was born in 1935, in Madrid, into a botanist’s family: his father, Rivas Goday and his grandfather, Rivas Mateos, were prominent botanists in their time. Under his father’s leadership, he made contact with the most important European vegetation scientists of the post-war period, during the 1950s and 1960s, particularly Braun-Blanquet and Tüxen. Other important scientists of that period who also were in contact with Rivas-Martínez were Pinto da Silva, Font Quer and Bolòs. As a researcher, Rivas-Martínez began by studying the vegetation of central and western Spain; his Ph.D. work about the Guadarrama Range is one example of this. From the 1970s on, he extended his interest to the whole Iberian Peninsula and later to the western Mediterranean area. From the mid-seventies onwards he played an important role in developing the concept of vegetation complexes, called sigma-associations. Another milestone in his work is his intensive study of bioclimatology and biogeography on the basis of vegetation patterns, first in the Iberian Peninsula and later all over the world. In more recent times, since the early 1990s, he has led the vast inventory of the habitat types in Spain, and now he is finishing an overall check-list of the vascular plant communities for Spain and Portugal. Salvador Rivas-Martínez is an IAVS member since the early times and has participated in many ways in the activities of the organization. He has been a frequent participant in the annual symposia, has been a member of the Advisory Council for several periods, and has helped with the organization of two IAVS symposia: Tenerife in 1993 and Bilbao in 1999. In those years he was co-leader of the IAVS excursions, which took place through Tenerife and peninsular Spain and Portugal, respectively.