Elias Magnus Fries

Elias Magnus Fries ( born August 15, 1794 Femsjö parish, Jönköping County, † February 8, 1878 in Uppsala ) was a Swedish botanist who was the first to develop a system for classification of the fungi. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Fr ". Along with his 33 years older contemporary Christian Hendrik Persoon applies Fries as the father of modern mycology.

Life and work

Elias Magnus Fries was born in the historic province of Småland as a son of the pastor and grew up as an only child. From a young age his father could arouse the passion for botany in him. When he was twelve years old, kindled his interest in mushrooms. At age 17, he already knew more than 300 species. Supposedly learned Fries the Latin language before the Swedish; he had read no problems at that time, mostly written in Latin, scientific works of botany. He could work Persoons and other mycologists understand and learned by common names and descriptions of many fungi. Only Persoons knowledge about mushrooms at this time were even more extensive than that of the child prodigy Elias Magnus Fries.

At the University of Lund Fries made ​​in 1814 the conclusion of Doctor of Philosophy ( Latin: Doctor Philosophiae ) and worked there for several years as a lecturer. In 1834 he moved to the University of Uppsala. Since the Department of Botany already held Göran Wahlberg (1780-1851), he was first a professor of applied economics. In 1851 he finally received after the death of Wahlberg's appeal for the professorship in botany.

From 1821 Fries tried to classify all known at the time fungi. He told them first into four major classes, where he was based on the spore-forming bodies of fungi. So he called the agarics Agaricus as, the boletes as Boletus, the coral fungi Clavaria and the tooth fungi Hydnum. Later there was a more extensive differentiation in families and genera.

Within the agarics frieze different example types according to their spore color ( macroscopic feature ) and - which was quite revolutionary for the taxonomy - the basis of the microscopic structure of the spores and the hymenium. So the Hygrophorus ( Hygrophorus ) were separated as the first genus due to the discovery of their particularly long basidia ( a microscopic feature ) from other genres.

From Fries comes the first description of many species of fungi, including those of the chanterelle ( Cantharellus cibarius Fr.)

Fries was a member of numerous academies and learned societies, including the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (since 1821), the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala (since 1831) and Kungliga och Antikvitets academies Vitterhets history (since 1855). In 1847 he was inducted into the Svenska academies and 1868 Award from Lund University with an honorary doctorate.

His son Theodor Magnus Fries (1832-1913) was also a botanist.

Selected Works

• Observationes mycologicae. 1815-1818 (2 volumes).
• Systema mycologicum. 1821-1832 (3 volumes; continued with this work Fries founded by Linnaeus binomial nomenclature for fungi by ).
• Sveriges och ätlige giftiga Svampar. 1861-1868 ( Edible and poisonous mushrooms of Sweden ).
• Hymenomycetes European. 1874 ( agarics ( Hymenomycetidae ) in Europe).
• Linnaeus, Lefnadsteckning. Stockholm 1903 (2 volumes).