Guy Richard Bisby

Guy Richard Bisby (1889–1958) was an American Canadian mycologist and botanist in plant pathology. He spent his early career working as a professor at the University of Minnesota and University of Manitoba in plant pathology, and his late career as Senior Assistant Mycologist at the Imperial Mycological Institute in Kew, England. He published around fifty books and papers in mycology that extensively contributed to the taxonomy and nomenclature of fungi.

Mycology and plant pathology have a strong overlap due to rusts, pathogenic plant-killing fungal diseases. Bisby took a year's long leave of absence in 1921–1922 to visit the Imperial Bureau of Mycology in Kew, England. After his return to Manitoba, he set about systemizing and collecting fungi in the region. The result was the 1929 book The Fungi of Manitoba, which he co-authored with Buller and John Dearness. In 1931, he and co-author Edwin John Butler published The Fungi of India, partially based on samples collected while Bisby was on sabbatical there. Bisby remarried in 1936 to Berenice Butler, an English artist. Preparing to move to England, he resigned from the University of Manitoba. During his term in Winnipeg, Bisby (and Buller's team) had gathered several thousand fungi samples which were stored in the herbarium of the University of Manitoba. The collection was later transferred to the Canadian National Mycological Herbarium (DAOM) in Ottawa. He also republished The Fungi of Manitoba in an expanded second edition in 1939. Bisby was still close friends with Buller, and as Buller grew ill late in his life, he arranged for Bisby to edit the seventh and final volume of Buller's work Researches on Fungi. Buller died in 1943, and the work was eventually published in 1950.