Eugene Jablonski Records

Dr. Eugene Jablonski (1892-1975) was a trained geologist and botanist. After a professional career as an oil geologist, he was named Honorary Curator of Tropical Botany in 1960 at the New York Botanical Garden. His field of concentration was the Euphorbiaceae. He reorganized the Garden’s collections of the Euphorbiaceae , a undertaking that took ten years. He determined the Euphorbiaceae in the reports on The Botany of the Guayana Highland. An expert cartographer, he prepared the maps of the Rock Garden and the Native Plant Garden.

Jablonski received his Ph.D. degree in Botany, Geopaleontology and Cosmography in 1914 from the University of Budapest. In 1915, he published a monograph of the Bridelieae. He assisted Dr. Ferdinand Pax at the University of Leipsig, with the treatment of Euphorbiaceae for Engler’s Das Pflanzenreich (1916).

During WWI Dr. Jablonski was arrested as a spy while doing geological field work and drafted into the Austrian Imperial II Tyrolean Chasseur Regiment and sent to the Russian front. He was captured and imprisoned by the Russians but he escaped and returned to Hungary. In 1918 he was named to the Hungarian Royal Geological Institute.

In the midst of the Hungarian counter-revolution, Jablonski and his wife (Mary Kremery) escaped to Poland. There he joined the staff of the Galicya Oil Company Czechovice. In 1927 he transferred to the Vacuum Oil Company (a subsidiary of Standard Oil of New York and eventually part of Mobil Oil) and moved to the United States. As a field geologist he traveled extensively. In 1938 he became a citizen of the United States.

He completed a Revision of Trigonostemon Euphorbisceae) of Malaya, Sumatra and Borneo in 1962. In 1963 he was honored by the University of Budapest with the award of Doctor Honoris Causa. In 1971 he was awarded the New York Botanical Garden’s Distinguished Service Award. Dr. Jablonski died on May 24, 1975.