Rodham E. Tulloss, a 70-year-old retired electronics engineer in Roosevelt, N.J., has one of the world's largest and most scientifically important collections of Amanita mushrooms in the world. It's in his garage.
From Scientific American:
He has worked with evolutionary biologists at Harvard University and co-authored a paper with them in PLOS ONE that showed how amanitas lost genes associated with breaking down cellulose as they evolved—in effect, moving from free-living organisms into a long-term, symbiotic relationship with trees. He is also an honorary research associate at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx and has worked with mycologists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences's Kunming Institute of Botany and many others to reliably identify and describe new species.
"The Mushroom Man" (SciAm)
