Izabela Textorisová (16.3.1866 Ratková - 12.9.1949 Krupina), a postal worker by profession, was Slovakia's first female botanist. Her formal education ended with the sixth class of elementary school in 1877, after which she was purely self-taught. In 1886 she passed an examination, in Revúca, for a position with the postal service and went to work at newly established offices in Blatnica, where she remained for the rest of her life. So profound was her thirst for education that, in addition to holding down a demanding job and looking after her parents and three sisters (and despite all the prejudices of the time against the work of women), she learned a number of languages and applied herself vigorously to the study of plants, minerals and speleology. In botany she became a renowned and acknowledged expert, particularly in the flora of Turiec. She collected and classified plants, and exchanged specimens with many leading authorities. Her copious herbarium, now deposited with the botany department of Comenius University in Bratislava, is still today, as in the past, a source for botanists of the highest rank. In 1913 she published the results of her work in the journal Botanikai Kozeményiek under the title "Flora Data from the County of Turiec", setting out more than a hundred plants whose presence in Turiec had previously passed unrecorded. The distinguished Hungarian botanist Margittai named a new species of thistle, which she discovered in 1893, in her honour: Carduus textorisianus Marg. Izabela Textorisová played an active part in the cultural and civic life of her people, and made the acquaintance of numerous Slovak intellectuals, mostly writers. She contributed to journals, mostly under a pseudonym, and although without formal training in botany, became a well-known and respected specialist in the discipline. The whole of the botany community holds her contribution to Slovak science in high esteem, continues to draw on her work and recognises her as Slovakia's first female botanist.