Alexandru Popovici (1866-1941) – biologist, university professor, founder and director (1922-1936) of the Botanical Garden near the University Palace, the first researcher of Macromicets in Moldavia.
He attended primary school in his home village (Cârniceşti-Iaşi), then Ştefan cel Mare Secondary School and The National High School in Iasi, graduating in 1885. He took his Bachelor Degree in Natural Sciences at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Bucharest (1888) and he continued his studies in Germany, where, in 1893, he defended his doctoral thesis “Ueber Struktur und Entwickelung eigenartiger Wandverdikungen in Samen und Fruchtschalen” at the University of Bonn, under the supervision of the famous botanist E. Strasburger. He worked as a teaching assistant at the Botanical Institute of Bucharest until 1895 and then he was appointed professor of Botany at the University of Iasi, where he organized and managed the Laboratory until he retired, in 1936.
Member of the Society of Mycology in France, Dean of the Faculty of Sciences in Iasi, founder, together with the zoologist Ion Borcea, of the “Annales Scientifiques de l’Université de Jassy” Journal (1900) and “V. Adamachi” Science Journal (1910).
He discovered and described over 500 macromicet species in all areas of Moldavia, he published many scientific papers in the fields of cryptograms and phanerogams, he defined the research trends in various fields of Botany.
