Fries, Elias Magnus (1794-1878), Swedish botanist, was born at Femsjö, Småland, on the 15th of August 1794. From his father, the pastor of the church at Femsjö, he early acquired an extensive knowledge of flowering plants. In 1811 he entered the university of Lund, where in 1814 he was elected docent of botany and in 1824 professor. In 1834 he became professor of practical economy at Upsala, and in 1844 and 1848 he represented the university of that city in the Rigsdag. On the death of Göran Wahlenberg (1780-1851) he was appointed professor of botany at Upsala, where he died on the 8th of February 1878. Fries was admitted a member of the Swedish Royal Academy in 1847, and a foreign member of the Royal Society of London in 1875.
As an author on the Cryptogamia he was in the first rank. He wrote Novitiae florae Suecicae (1814 and 1823); Observationes mycologicae (1815); Flora Hollandica (1817-1818); Systema mycologicum (1821-1829); Systema orbis vegetabilis, not completed (1825); Elenchus fungorum (1828); Lichenographia Europaea (1831); Epicrisis systematis mycologici (1838; 2nd ed., or Hymenomycetes Europaei, 1874); Summa vegetabilium Scandinaviae (1846); Sveriges ätliga och giftiga Svampar, with coloured plates (1860); Monographia hymenomycetum Suecicae (1863), with the Icones hymenomycetum, vol. i. (1867), and pt. i. vol. ii. (1877).
