Anjali Roy

Anjali Roy (April 1930 – 22 January 2017) was an eminent Indian mycologist and academician. The fungus genus Royoporus is named in her honour.

Early life
Roy was born in April 1930 in Rajshahi, then in pre-Independence India and now in Bangladesh. She passed her matriculation examination from the girls' school there in 1945. She graduated with honors in botany from Presidency College, Calcutta, and her post-graduation from Ballygunge Science College in 1952. She obtained a D.Sc. from the Calcutta University under the guidance of S. N. Banerjee.

Early research and academics
Roy's initial post-doctoral research, on the Coriolellus, was conducted in Canada where she was mentored by Mildred K. Nobles. Returning to India, she began work as a medical mycologist in the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine. In 1974, she joined the University of Burdwan as a lecturer. Five years later, she moved to the Visva-Bharati University, where she remained until she retired in 1995. Roy as professor mentored 10 Ph.D. students.

Specialization in polypores
Roy developed a lasting interest in wood-rotting polypores, and devoted herself to the taxonomy of the group of fungi, characterizing them based on morphology, anatomy, characteristics in cultures, chemical responses, the type of rot they induced and their sexuality. She authored around 150 papers on the subject, and was published in authoritative journals in her field. She also served on the advisory committee of the Journal of Mycopathological Research, the official journal of the Indian Mycological Society.

Roy's research culminated in a monograph titled Polyporaceae of India in 1996, a collaboration with her student Asit Baran De. The monograph summarized 114 Polyporaceae species, based mainly on the authors' own material collected over a forty-year period from across India. Besides, they also studied the collections at many botanical institutions, especially in the Presidency College and the Forest Research Institute in Dehradun.

De went on to name a genus of Polyporaceae, Royoporus, in her honour.

Roy died on 22 January 2017.