M.J. Berkeley lived in Britain during the nineteenth century. An ordained minister, he is best known for his contributions to the study and classification of fungi. He compiled a number of volumes of literature on fungi. One of the best-known examples is the massive and well-illustrated Outlines of British Fungology, which was published in 1860. In this volume, Berkeley detailed a thousand species of fungi then known to be native to the British Isles. He was involved active in chronicling the discoveries of others. As examples, he co-authored a paper that described the findings of a United States-Japan expedition that found many species of fungi in the North Pacific in 1852-1853, and wrote several treatises on botanic expeditions to New Zealand and Antarctica.

Another of Berkeley's important contributions were connected to the Irish potato famine. From 1846 to 1851, the loss of the potato crops in Ireland resulted in the...