Per Magnus Jørgensen
Per Magnus Jørgensen (born 1944) is a Norwegian botanist and lichenologist, and Professor Emeritus of Systematic Botany at the University of Bergen. Biography. Jørgensen was born in Stavanger, Norway, in 1944. He obtained his Candidatus realium from the University of Bergen in 1969. In 1978, he earned a doctor philosophiae from University of Bergen, with a dissertation titled "The lichen family Pannariaceae in Europe". He was a student of prominent lichenologist Rolf Santesson; Gunnar Degelius was another early mentor. A few years after receiving his doctorate, he was appointed Professor of Systematic Botany at the University of  Bergen. He was known for delivering his university lectures with great enthusiasm, and for helping to popularize botany in Norway. As of 2020, he is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Bergen. Jørgensen is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences. He has more than 200 publications dealing with the systematics, floristics, biogeography, and nomenclature of lichens; in these papers he described about 300 taxa new to science. A specialist of the family Pannariaceae, he has also written about several other families in the third volume of the "Nordic Lichen Flora". More recently, he has published several works  about the history of lichenology. Jørgensen is a connoisseur of the plant genus "Rhododendron" and maintains a large collection of these plants in the Bergen botanical garden. He was editor of the popular science magazine "Naturen" from 1991 to 1997. In 2021 Jørgensen was awarded the Acharius Medal, recognizing his lifelong contribution to lichenology. Lichen taxa named in honour of Jørgensen include the species "Stigmidium joergensenii" , "Leptogium joergensenii" , and the genus "Joergensenia" .