Jan Bystrek (17 June 1934 – 20 February 2020) was a Polish botanist and professor of natural sciences.

After graduating from high school, he started studies in Kraków at the AGH University of Science and Technology, which he had to leave after two months for financial reasons.

In the years 1952 to 1957 he studied at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS) in Lublin at the Faculty of Biology and Earth Sciences.

[2] He completed all level of academic promotion at this institution, including doctorate (1965), habilitation (1977), and Professor (1991).

In the period 1997–2004 at the TWP, the Regional Center for Teacher Training and School Leadership conducted field classes with biology teachers: Polish National Parks and their role in ecological and environmental education.

[8] As an academic teacher, he conducted classes in plant morphology and systematics, biogeography, biological aspects of environmental protection, flower biology and flowering ecology, lichenology, mycology, and Polish geography.

In 1978 Bystrek became one of the co-founders of the mycological and lichenological section of the Polskie Towarzystwo Botaniczne [pl].

[9] His colleague Beata Krzewicka, president of lichenology section of the Polish Botanical Society, expressed that she will remember Bystrek as "not only as a scientist with extensive knowledge and experience, but also as an exceptionally kind, open, helpful and straightforward man".

[14][12][15] In his publications, he included, inter alia, taxonomic corrections of the genus Alectoria.