Rosmarie Honegger

Rosmarie Honegger (born 1947) is a Swiss lichenologist and Emeritus Professor at the University of Zurich.

Academic career

Honegger was born in 1947 and grew up in Emmental, Switzerland. She developed an early interest in plants, and was recommended to study lichens by a biology teacher. This led to a research project involving compiling a flora of her home town, which, in 1967, led to her earning a prize at an international science fair in San Francisco. The same year, she began studies at the University of Basel. Honegger retired in 2009 as Emeritus Professor. From 2011 she worked with Dianne Edwards, a palaeobotanist at the Cardiff University on lichen fossils found on the Welsh borderland.

Honegger was awarded the International Association for Lichenology's Acharius Medal for her lifetime work in lichenology in 2008 and in 2015 she received the Linnean Medal recognising her contribution to the natural sciences. She was one of the "Fifty influential lichenologists" discussed in Ingvar Kärnefelt's 2011 review of the scientific progress of lichenology and the scientists who study it.

Selected publications