Dedication

Joséphine Th. Koster entered her service at the Rijksherbarium as an assistant, April 1930, in the midst of the economic crisis. She was engaged as an, unsalaried collaborator, the then current type of position the Netherlands’ State could offer its scientific offspring. When Prof. Dr. H. J. Lam, freshly appointed Director in August 1933, ordered her to start work each morning as early as the salaried staff-members, she resigned from her unremunerative post by 31 Dec. 1933. She then continued, as a guest of the Rijksherbarium, her investigations on the Compositae of the Dutch East Indies, and in 1935 she took her doctor’s degree on the thesis ‘The Compositae of the Malay Archipelago’ at Leyden University. Her promotor was Prof. Lam. In the end the unfavourable labour-market of that time appeared to have favourable consequences for algology; for Miss Koster, she once confessed to me, had a great ambition to teach biology in secondary schools!