by Gaytha Langlois & Tomáš Pánek
The Society of Protozoologists was established in 1947 in Chicago, Illinois, USA, to promote a closer association among all those interested in any kind of protozoological research. As noted in the Society’s Constitution, “The aim of the Society was to form an association of workers for the presentation and discussion of new and important facts and problems in protozoology and for the adoption of such measures as will tend to advance protozoological science.”
The leadership included R.F. Nigrelli, President; B.B. Morgan, Vice-President; and T.L. Jahn, Secretary-Treasurer.
At the first meeting of the Society on December 28, 1949, in conjunction with the AAAS meeting in New York City, the 50 attending members set forth the Society’s Constitution and Bylaws. The Executive Committee (EC) serves as the leadership of the Society. Initially, EC meetings were held annually, but today they take place remotely as needed.
The Society has held annual meetings for its members, often in collaboration with other biological science associations, for over 70 years. Each year, the Business Meeting of the membership addresses necessary changes and endorses recommendations from the EC.
In addition, the Society’s scientific meetings have taken place in various locations around the world. These meetings were initially held every four to five years, starting in 1961. The shift to become the International Society of Protistologists (ISOP) in 2005 has been characterized by a strong commitment to be truly “internationalized,” noted by the increased number of meetings on different continents and in multiple countries, thus allowing for regional shifts in attendance and participation. Today, ISOP co-organizes scientific meetings annually and sponsors the International Congress of Protistology (ICOP), a major protistology conference held every four years since 1961. The first ICOP was held in Prague, Czech Republic (former Czechoslovakia). The next ICOP will take place in 2025 in Seoul, Korea.
In 1951, the Journal and Editorial Committees were established with the express task of formulating and overseeing the development of a scholarly journal for the Society. The first volume of the quarterly published Journal of Protozoology made its debut in 1954, led by William Trager, the Journal’s first editor, who served from 1954-1965. The journal was regarded as a highly respected outlet for original research papers. In later years, a Supplement was added, containing the Programs and Abstracts of annual meetings, officer and committee reports, or revisions of the Constitution. In 1989 the Journal began to be printed bimonthly instead of quarterly. The name was changed in 1993 to the Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology, which has maintained its reputation as a well-respected journal in protistology.
“Two events have helped to shape protistology as a specific scientific discipline. The first such event was the creation of the Society of Protozoologists in the U.S. in 1947 (and of its Journal of Protozoology, first published in 1954), the second event was the First International Conference on Protozoology, held in 1961 in Prague.” – Jiří Vávra
The Society began to publish a Newsletter in 1976, usually edited by the office of the Secretary, and containing announcements and other news of general interest to the membership such as information on future meeting sites, winners of awards, workshop notices, obituary tributes, and letters from members. In 1991 an official editor was separately designated to oversee the newsletter’s publication. This allowed all members to become better informed about the Society’s activities. Although the Newsletter has been inactive for some time, the newly formed Communication Committee, under the leadership of the Executive Secretary, is dedicated to publishing a quarterly edition to keep our community informed, engaged, and connected.
The Society of Protozoology has always advocated an international outlook and attitude in membership and organizational affiliations and has encouraged broader participation in Society affairs, with members joining from over forty countries by the 1990s. The British Section was the first to be established in 1962, followed by sections formed in Israel, Japan, Hungary, Scandinavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Argentina, India, Mexico, Russia, France, and China. The Society´s Membership peaked in the late 1960s with more than 1000 members, leveling off at around 800 in the 1990s, and more recently centering around 300 members.
The Society has established several funded awards, beginning with the Richard P. Hall Memorial Fund in 1969, which was awarded to students to help with publishing costs. In 1976 the Seymour H. Hutner Young Investigator Prize was established to acknowledge a young scientist not long after receiving his/her Ph.D. for outstanding research on the “cutting edge” of some field of protozoology. Students of Dr. Theodore Louis Jahn established an award in his name shortly before his death in 1979, a cash prize given yearly to a student member of the Society who presented the best poster or research paper at a Society meeting. With additional funding from Eugene Bovee (one of Jahn’s graduate students and co-author of An Illustrated Guide to the Protozoa (1st edition) and the classic handbook How to Know the Protozoa), the Jahn/Bovee Presentation Award was created. Two additional awards were established in the 1990s. The George G. Holz, Jr. and Robert L. Conner Travel Award was created to provide travel awards to students and young investigators that would facilitate their participation in Society meetings, and the John O. Corliss Ciliate Systematics Award was set up to recognize a young ciliatologist authoring a published research paper in ciliate taxonomy judged to be most worthy. The Awards Committee has the responsibility of recommending to the Executive Committee (for their ultimate approval) those people chosen for the awards. The William Trager Award for the Outstanding Paper of the Year is decided by the Editorial Board of the Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology.
The Society leverages its strong financial foundation to support the participation of early-career researchers at its scientific meetings, to support regional conferences, workshops, and seminars hosted by Affiliates, and to foster global networking within the protistological community. The Society also periodically assembles a team of experts that revise the higher-level classification of eukaryotes. It is both intellectually and financially involved in the UniEuk project, particularly in the EukMap module. This module is an open, inclusive, community-based, and expert-driven international initiative aimed at creating a flexible and adaptive universal taxonomic framework for eukaryotes. Additionally, the emerging ISOP Image Repository will assist researchers in locating, linking, or storing curated protist image collections—often the result of a lifelong endeavor—which will be made available for future scientific analysis.
