Elias Magnus Fries

Elias Magnus Fries (1794 to 1878) was a Swedish mycologist and botanist, sometimes called the Linnaeus of mycology. Born at Femsjo in Smaland, the son of the local pastor, he entered Lund University in 1811, took his doctorate in 1814 and became an associate professor of botany that year. He became a full professor in 1824, held a chair at Uppsala University from 1834, directed the Uppsala botanical garden from 1849 and served as rector of the university in 1853. He described and named thousands of fungus and lichen species, 3,210 of them new fungi, and his three-volume Systema mycologicum of 1821 to 1832 is among his main works. He is regarded, after Christian Hendrik Persoon, as a founding father of the modern taxonomy of mushrooms, using spore colour and the arrangement of the spore-bearing surface.