Meet the Authors
Dr. Robert Fogel
Professor of Biology / Curator of Fungi
Bob Fogel grew up in Roseburg, Oregon. He received his Ph.D. from Oregon State University in 1975 and was hired by the University of Michigan in 1978. He was the recipient of the Class of 1923 Undergraduate Teaching Award in 1982, and the Mycological Society of America Alexopoulos Prize for Research in 1984. He has taught General Biology, Mushrooms and Molds: Biology and Use, Soil Biology, and Injecting Creativity into Science. He is intrigued by the biology and ecology of truffles and false truffles. He finds it particularly interesting that so many different groups of fungi produce closed, animal-dispersed, sporocaps and that all of these fungi are ectomycorrhizal symbionts dependent on trees for carbohydrates.
When not collecting truffles, he enjoys gardening, building computers, and reading science fiction, biographies and mysteries. He has been married since 1968 to Mikal, a Research Assistant in the Herbarium. They have two daughters, a cat named Truffle and like to collect moths and the occassional butterfly.
Patricia Rogers
Fungus Collection Coordinator
Patricia Rogers received her B.A. in Literature from Wayne State University in 1978. She has been working in the Herbarium since 1990. She grew up on the southwest side of Detroit, where wildlife was scarce and the appearance of anything besides squirrels, English sparrows or robins was unusual. People would come out of their houses to look if a blue jay or cardinal appeared. Summer visits to her grandfather's cottage at Duck Lake and the books of Herbert Zim gave her the gift of an appreciation of nature.
She has published articles in the Michigan Resources Magazine on prickly pear cacti and black-crowned night herons. She enjoys reading, going for long walks with her dog, baking, and watching old movies.