Klaus Rohde (was born in Brandenburg/ Havel, Germany, on 30 March 1932. He received his schooling at the Nikolai-Schule and the Saldria Gymnasium in Brandenburg, completing his Abitur in 1949. He proceeded to Teachers’ Training College in Brandenburg, graduating in 1950 with a Teacher’s Diploma in Russian language. In 1950 and 1951 he attended the University of Potsdam where he studied Slavic languages. In late 1951 he enrolled at the University of Munster/Westphalia in West Germany to study zoology, botany, physiological chemistry and physics. In 1954 under the supervision of Prof B. Rensch, Rohde carried out PhD research on the behaviour and physiology of Paramecium. In 1957 Rohde was awarded his Dr rer.nat (PhD) magna cum laud, by the University of Munster, a paper arising from his research being published the following year (Rohde, 1958).
From 1960 to 1967 Rohde took an academic position at the University of Malaya, supervising one MSc, two PhD, and several BSc Honours students (Rohde & Lee, 1967; Rohde, Lee & Lim, 1968). He was elected as the 3rd President of the Malaysian Society of Parasitology and Tropical Medicine, his predecessors being Prof Sandosham and Prof Desowitz.
Rohde was awarded his Habilitation from the Universitat Bocum in 1970, and from 1970-1972 he was appointed as a post-doctoral Research Fellow to the Department of Parasitology at the University of Queensland (the department’s first Research Fellow) , to conduct research on the ultrastructure of monogeneans . From May to December 1972, Rohde was Reader in Zoology at the University of Khartoum, Sudan. Here he taught first to fourth year students, and accompanied a Cambridge University Research group on an expedition to the Red Sea to study reef ecology. In January 1973, when it became clear he would not be appointed to the Chair of Zoology at Khartoum, Rohde returned to the University of Queensland to take up appointment as Director of the Heron Island Research Station on the Great Barrier Reef. Here he stayed until February 1976, when he was appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Zoology at the University of New England (UNE) in Armidale, New South Wales. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1978 and was awarded a Personal Chair in 1993. In 1996 he received the UNE Vice Chancellor ‘s inaugural award for excellence in science, as well as of the Clarke Medal of the Royal Society of New South Wales.
Rohde’s 350 publications embrace research on ecology, zoogeography, development , specia tion and ultra-structure of marine parasites, and parasites of tortoises. Included in these are major contributions to several books . He has undertaken research visits to the Red Sea, North Sea, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Mexico, Papua-New Guinea, Southeast Asia, New Zealand, South Pacific Islands, Canada, Hawaii and many places along the southern and eastern coasts of Australia. Additionally, he has been a Visiting Professor at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, November-December 1987, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Smithsonian Institute, US National Museum Washington, December 1987-January 1988.
Since 1979 Rohde’s scientific expertise has been utilised as a Member of four editorial boards of scientific journals: these being: International Journal for Parasitology 1979-1984; Malaysian Journal of Science 1994, Acta Parasitologica 1994- ; Folia Parasitologica 1994-. He was a subject editor of Diseases of Aquatic Organisms from 1985-1986, and has been an advisor to that Journal since 1986.
Rohde is an elected Fellow of the Institute of Biology (1985), the Australian Institute of Biology (1987), and the Australian Society for Parasitology (1998). He has been a member of the selection committee for the Bancroft Mackerras Medal 1989- 1990, 1996 and 1999, and Chairman of said Committee in 1990-1991. He has supervised many PhD, MSc and BSc Honours students at the Universities of Malaya, and of New England. Rohde has published descriptions of 1 new subfamily, 7 new genera and 32 new species.
This biography and the associated image is taken from Memoirs of the Queensland Museuim Vol.53 “Parasitology and the Queensland Museum” (Brisbane, 30th November 2007) Edited by BM Angus, LRG Cannon and RD Adlard
