Bruce M. Carlson attended Gustavus Adolphus College with the intent of preparing for a career in fish biology, and worked for the Minnesota DNR as an aquatic biologist. After completing an MS degree in ichthyology at Cornell University, he undertook further graduate and medical studies at the University of Minnesota. Immediately upon receiving his MD and PhD degrees, he entered an exchange program between the Academies of Sciences of the USA and the USSR. He then joined the University of Michigan, where he served as a professor for forty years. During that time, he was Chairman of the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology and later, Director of the Institute of Gerontology. Over his career, Dr. Carlson has conducted research and lived in the USSR, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Finland and New Zealand. In addition to around 200 research articles, he has written over twenty books as sole author and has edited another 15 symposium volumes and translations. Since retirement in 2006, he has again become active in research on fish biology and the study of lakes. He now spends summers at the cabin on Ten Mile Lake in northern Minnesota.
