American lichenologist at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Bruce Fink was born and raised in Blackberry, Illinois, and gained a BSc (1887) and an MSc (1894) from the University of Illinois. Two years later he was awarded a Master of Arts degree from Harvard University where he met the eminent lichenologist Dr. W.G. Farlow and he became interested in the cryptogamic plants. Between 1887 and 1892 Fink was also the principal of various high schools before he began to teach at Upper Iowa University. During this period he earned a PhD from the University of Minnesota (1899) with a thesis entitled "A contribution to the life history of Rumex". After several years as professor of botany at Grinnell College (1903-1906) he was named head of botany at Miami University and remained there until his death.

Fink was primarily interested in lichens and in this field he published over 100 works, not only on their taxonomy but also on their distribution and general biology. Early on he collected extensively in Fayette, Iowa, and between 1896 and 1903 he was a member of the Natural History Survey of Minnesota. Conducting floristic studies in his summer holidays he published an important paper entitled "The Lichens of Minnesota" (1913), and was in the process of preparing a lichen flora for the entire state at the time of his death from heart failure in 1927. Luckily the project was taken on by Joyce Hedrick who worked on the manuscript at the University of Michigan and the Lichen Flora of the United States was published in 1935, complete with descriptions and keys for 1,578 species.

Fink also studied and published works on fungi, particularly the Ascomycetes, including a list of fungi of Indiana and a paper on fungal distribution in Puerto Rico. In a different field, Fink also published an important book entitled The Tobacco Habit (1914) which condemned the practice. A member of numerous botanical societies, he was president of the Sullivant Moss Society (1910) and the Ohio Academy of Sciences (1912), as well as the editor of the journal Mycologia.

Sources:
O.E. Jennings, 1937, "Fink's Lichen Flora of the United States", American Bryological and Lichenological Society, 40(3): 64
L.H. Pammel, 1928, "In Memoriam: Dr. Bruce Fink", Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Sciences, 33: 34-39
R.B. Wylie, 1928, "Bruce Fink, Lichenologist", Mycologia, 10: 1-2.