Pier Luigi Nimis

Pier Luigi Nimis is a senior professor of botany (retired in 2023) at the University of Trieste in Italy.

He specialises in lichenology and phytogeography, including the uses of lichens as indicators of pollution and devising methods for web-based identification keys.

Pier Luigi Nimis was the first of two boys, grown up in the small home town of Tarcento in Friuli (NE Italy).

His father, Carlo, was an Alpine soldier who survived the Russian expedition of WW2, returned on foot, and became a prosperous baker; his mother, Matilde, was a popular teacher who taught whole generations of young people.

Fascinated from a young age by insects, the young Nimis built a remarkable collection of more than 10.000 specimens from the surroundings of his village, which, however, was swept away by the 1976 Friuli earthquake.

Nimis studied at the Liceo Classico Jacopo Stellini in Udine, after which he went to the University of Trieste, where he worked on a thesis on the thorny-cushions vegetation of the high Mediterranean mountains under the mentorship of Sandro Pignatti.

A post-doc research at University of Western Ontario (Canada), devoted to the vegetation of the Alaska Highway, tutored by László Orlóci, let him discover the world of lichens, whose study he later pursued with his Master and friend Josef Poelt.

After his doctorate, Nimis became a member of staff at the University of Trieste and by 1986 he was Professor of Systematic Botany.

After the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986 he led programmes to map and monitor levels of radioactive caesium in macrofungi, forest plants and mosses in Italy.

He extended his research to the use of lichens as bioindicators of air pollution, demonstrating a correlation between lung cancer and air pollution by mapping human mortality and lichen biodiversity in the Veneto region of Italy.

From 1987 until 1993 Nimis was president of the Italian Lichen Society, as well as one of its founders; editor-in-chief of the International Lichenological Newsletter (1997-2000), he was president of the International Association for Lichenology from 2000 until 2004.

He has since also held several administrative posts such as the chair of the School of Biological Sciences from 1988 to 1994, Director of the Department of Biology from 1996 to 2001, and Dean of the Doctoral School of Biomonitoring from 2009 until 2011.

Nimis's research was initially on phytogeography and methods for the joint mapping of plant distribution ranges with multivariate methods, mainly in the Boreal and Arctic zones.

Later he began to concentrate on lichens, including their identification and role as indicators of atmospheric pollution.

Nimis's research has also included collaborations on checklists of the lichen biodiversity in the Mediterranean and Antarctic regions, as well as development since the 1990s of web-based identification keys that have been applied to several groups of organisms and developed into the KeyToNature mobile apps from 2015.

Presently, Nimis is working on a computer-aided key to all lichens hitherto known from Italy and neighbouring countries, whose publication in paper-form is foreseen for 2026.

The keys are being published online in the site of ITALIC, the information system on Italian lichens.

His publication in 1993 of a comprehensive catalogue of 2145 infrageneric taxa of lichens found in Italy, followed by an updated version in 2016, are considered significant landmarks in scholarship and thoroughness, and are of value for their descriptions and feature keys of lichens beyond the Italian region.

In 1993 he was awarded the OPTIMA Silver Medal for the best book on the phytotaxonomy of the Mediterranean area published in the preceding three years, the International Ferrari-Soave Prize for Biology from the Academy of Sciences of Turin in 2009, and the Acharius Medal in 2014.

Three genera and eight species have been named to honour Nimis: Nimisia Kärnefelt & A. Thell (1993), Nimisiostella Calat., Barreno & O.E. Erikss.

(1997), Nimisora Pérez-Ort., M. Svenss.

& J. C. Zamora (2023); Rinodina nimisii Giralt & H. Mayrhofer (1995), Topelia nimisiana Tretiach & Vězda (1992), Sphaerellothecium nimisii Brackel & Puntillo (2023)., Sarcogyne nimisii K.Knudsen, Kocourk.

& Hodková (2023), Circinaria nimisii Sohrabi, H. Mayrhofer, Obermayer & S.D. Leav.

(2023), Coenogonium nimisii Malíček & Sanderson (2023), Tremella nimisiana Freire-Rallo, Diederich, Millanes & Wedin (2023), and Xanthoparmelia nimisii Barcenas-Peña, Lumbsch & Grewe (2023)

Nimis is the author or co-author of several books and over 300 scientific publications.

The books include:

His scientific publications include:

Nimis was also the co-leader of a NATO Advanced Research Workshop in Wales in 2000 that brought together an international group of researchers working on lichens and air pollution and led to the publication of Monitoring with Lichens – Monitoring Lichens in 2002.