Helge Thorsten Lumbsch

Helge Thorsten Lumbsch (born 1964) is a German-born lichenologist living in the United States. His research interests include the phylogeny, taxonomy, and phylogeography of lichen-forming fungi; lichen diversity; lichen chemistry and chemotaxonomy. He is the Associate Curator and Head of Cryptogams and Chair of the Department of Botany at the Field Museum of Natural History.

Biography Lumbsch was born in Frankfurt in 1964. Interested in lichens already as a schoolboy, he studied natural sciences at the University of Marburg, under the tutelage of Aino Henssen. He received his diploma in 1989, with a dissertation titled Ontogenetisch-systematische Studien der Trapeliaceae und verwandter Familien (Lichenisierte Ascomyceten) ("Ontogenic-systematic studies of the Trapeliaceae and related families (lichenized ascomycetes)"). After Henssen's retirement in 1990, he transferred to the University in Essen, where he worked on the Lecanora subfusca group in Australasia, a subject that was the topic of his PhD dissertation. In 1993 he completed his doctorate under the supervision of Guido Benno Feige. In his 2009 survey of influential lichenologists, Ingvar Kärnefelt calls him "a leading scientist on systematics and evolution of lichenized fungi." In September 2025, Lumbsch was elected a foreign member of the Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences of Spain.

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