A tribute to Pierre Compere on the occasion of his retirement.

On the occasion of the retirement of Pierre Compere, his 35-year scientific career as a phycologist at the National Botanical Garden of Belgium is summarized. He mainly worked and published on the freshwater algal flora of tropical, mostly African, regions. He also started the publication of the first algal flora of Belgium. Besides his floristic and taxonomic studies, he has been very much involved in nomenclatural aspects of algae and is still secretary of the Committee for Algae of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy. He also remains active on the editorial boards of the Belgian Journal of Botany and the phycological journals Cryptogamie, Algologie and Diatom Research. His 85 phycological papers published during the period 1966-1999 are listed along with the algal taxa he described. (C) 2000 Adac/Editions scientifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS.