- Joseph Banks
Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, PRS (13 February 1743 - 19 June 1820) was an English naturalist, botanist and science patron. He took part in Cook's first great voyage (1768-1771) and around 80 species bear Banks' name. He is credited with the introduction to the West of eucalyptus, acacia, mimosa, and the genus named after him, "Banksia". - Asa Gray
Asa Gray (November 18, 1810 - January 30,1888) is considered the most important American botanist of the 19th century. He was instrumental in unifying the taxonomic knowledge of the plants of North America. Of Gray's many works on botany, the most popular was his "Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, from New England to Wisconsin and South to Ohio and Pennsylvania Inclusive". - Carolus Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus, Latinized as Carolus Linnaeus, also known after his ennoblement as, (May 23, 1707 – January 10, 1778), was a Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of nomenclature. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy." He is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology (see History of ecology). He was the most renowned botanist of his time, … - Robert Brown
Robert Brown (December 21, 1773-June 10, 1858) is acknowledged as the leading British botanist to collect in Australia during the first half of the 19th century. Brown was born in Montrose, Scotland on 21 December 1773. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he was a classmate of Thomas Dick. He joined the army as a surgeon in 1795. - Charles Lyell
Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, KT, (November 14, 1797 - February 22, 1875) was a Scottish lawyer, geologist, and populariser of uniformitarianism. Charles Lyell was born in Kinnordy, Angus, the eldest of ten children. Lyell's father, also named Charles, was a lawyer and botanist of minor repute and first exposed the younger Charles to the study of nature. Charles spent much of his childhood at the family’s other home, Bartley Lodge in the New Forest, England, … - David Bellamy
David J. Bellamy OBE (born 18 January 1933) is an English botanist, author, broadcaster, environmental campaigner, and a global warming sceptic. - Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin, was an English physician, natural philosopher, physiologist, inventor and poet. He was one of the founder members of the Lunar Society, a discussion group of pioneering industrialists and natural philosophers. He was a member of the Darwin — Wedgwood family, which most famously includes his grandson, Charles Darwin. - Gregor Mendel
Gregor Johann Mendel (July 20, 1822 - January 6, 1884) was a Moravian Augustinian priest and scientist often called the "father of modern genetics" for his study of the inheritance of traits in pea plants. Mendel showed that the inheritance of traits follows particular laws, which were later named after him. The significance of Mendel's work was not recognised until the turn of the 20th century. Its rediscovery prompted the foundation of genetics - Joseph Dalton Hooker
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, GCSI, OM, FRS, MD (June 30, 1817 - December 10, 1911) was an English botanist and traveller. - George Washington Carver
George Washington Carver saved the South from an economic crisis and possible famine by inventing more than three hundred uses for the peanut, over one hundred uses from the sweet potato, around 75 uses from the pecan and many more from Georgia clay. The new products from those soil-enriching plants allowed Carver to convince Southern farmers to rotate their crops instead of relying entirely on cotton--which was destroying soil and consequently plantations across the region. - David Douglas
David Douglas (June 25, 1799 - 1834) was a Scottish botanist. The son of a stonemason, he was born in the village of Scone north-west of Perth. He attended Kinnoul School and upon leaving he found work as an apprentice gardener in the estate of the 3rd Earl of Mansfield at Scone Palace. He spent seven years at this position before leaving to attend college in Perth to learn more of the scientific and mathematical aspects of plant culture. - John Bartram
John Bartram (May 23, 1699 O.S., Darby, Pennsylvania - September 22, 1777, Philadelphia) was an American botanist. Carolus Linnaeus said he was the "greatest natural botanist". Bartram was born into a Quaker farm family. He himself was a Pennsylvania farmer, with no formal education beyond the local school. - Theophrastus
Theophrastus, a native of Eressos in Lesbos, was the successor of Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. All the biographical information we have of him was provided by Diogenes Laertius' "Lives of the Philosophers", written four hundred years after Theophrastus' time, though "there is no intrinsic improbability in most of what Diogenes records". His given name was Tyrtamus (Τύρταμος), but he later became known by the nickname "Theophrastus", … - Luther Burbank
Luther Burbank (March 7 1849 - April 11, 1926) was an American botanist, horticulturist and a pioneer in agricultural science. He developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants over his 55-year career. Burbank's varied creations included fruits, flowers, grains, grasses, and vegetables. He developed a spineless cactus (useful for cattle-feed) and the plumcot. Burbank's most successful strains and varieties include the Shasta daisy, the Fire poppy, … - Katherine Esau
Katherine Esau (3 April, 1898 - 4 June 1997) was a German-American botanist. She was born in Yekaterinoslav, Russian Empire ("now Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine") to a family of Mennonites of German descent. After the Revolution her family moved to Germany, and then to California, where she achieved her doctorate in 1931. Esau was a pioneering plant anatomist - perhaps the greatest plant anatomist of the 20th century. - William Bartram
William Bartram was an American naturalist, the son of John Bartram. Bartram was born in Kingsessing, Pennsylvania. He accompanied his father on many of his travels, to the Catskill Mountains and Florida, and was noted at a young age for the quality of the drawings he produced of botanical specimens his father had gathered. He also had an increasing role in the maintenance of his father's showcase garden, and added several rare species to it. In 1773, … - Francis Darwin
Sir Francis "Frank" Darwin, F.R.S. (August 16 1848 - 19 September 1925), a son of the British naturalist Charles Darwin, followed his father into botany. - John Ray
John Ray (November 29, 1627 - January 17, 1705) was an English naturalist, sometimes referred to as the father of English natural history. Until 1670, he wrote his name as John Wray although no one knows why. He published important works on plants, animals, and natural theology. His classification of plants in his "Historia Plantarum", was an important step towards modern taxonomy. - Joseph Rock
Joseph Francis Charles Rock was an Austrian-American explorer, geographer, linguist and botanist. He was born in Vienna, Austria but moved to Honolulu, Hawaii in 1907, where he became an authority on the flora of these islands. From 1922–1949 he spent most of his time studying the flora, peoples and languages of southwest China, mainly in Yunnan, Sichuan, southwest Gansu and eastern Tibet. Many Asian plants that he collected can be seen in the Arnold Arboretum. - De Jussieu
De Jussieu, the name of a French family which came into prominent notice towards the close of the sixteenth century, and for a century and a half was distinguished for the botanists it produced. The following are its more eminent members: *Antoine de Jussieu (1686-1758), born at Lyon on 6 July 1686, was the son of Christophe de Jussieu (or Dejussieu), an apothecary of some repute, who published a "Nouveau traité de la thériaque" (1708). - William Turner
William Turner was a British ornithologist and botanist. He is sometimes called "the father of English botany" and the first ornithologist in the modern scientific spirit - Hugo de Vries
Hugo Marie de Vries was a Dutch botanist, known chiefly for being credited along with Carl Correns and Erich von Tschermak for rediscovering Gregor Mendel's laws of heredity in 1900, and for later developing his own anti-Darwinian mutation theory of evolution. By a quirk of history Correns was a student of Nägeli, a renowned botanist with whom Mendel corresponded about his work with peas but who failed to understand how significant Mendel's work was. - John Lindley
John Lindley (February 8, 1799 - November 1, 1865) was an English botanist. Lindley was born at Catton, near Norwich, where his father, George Lindley, author of "A Guide to the Orchard and Kitchen Garden", owned a nursery garden. He was educated at what was then Norwich Grammar School. His first publication, in 1819, a translation of the "Analyse du fruit" of L. C. M. Richard, was followed in 1820 by an original "Monographia Rosarum", … - Ferdinand von Mueller
Baron Sir Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller, KCMG (German: "Müller") (June 30, 1825-October 10 1896) was a German-Australian physician, geographer, and most notably botanist. - Allan Cunningham
Allan Cunningham was an English botanist and explorer, primarily known for his travels in New South Wales to collect plants. - John Stevens Henslow
John Stevens Henslow (February 6, 1796 - May 16, 1861) was an English botanist and geologist. Henslow was born at Rochester, the son of a solicitor John Prentis Henslow, who was the son of Sir John Henslow. He and was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge where he graduated as 16th wrangler in 1818, the year in which Adam Sedgwick became Woodwardian Professor of Geology. Henslow developed a passion for natural history which largely influenced his career, … - William Jackson Hooker
Sir William Jackson Hooker, FRS (July 6, 1785 – August 12, 1865) was an English botanist. - Hans Sloane
Sir Hans Sloane, Bart. was an Ulster-Scot physician and collector, notable for bequeathing his collection to the British nation which became the foundation of the British Museum. He also invented milk chocolate and gave his name to Sloane Square in London. - Thomas Nuttall
Thomas Nuttall (January 5, 1786 - September 10, 1859) was an English botanist and zoologist, who lived and worked in America from 1808 until 1841. Nuttall was born in the village of Long Preston, near Settle in Yorkshire and spent some years as an apprentice printer in England. Soon after going to the United States he met Professor Benjamin Smith Barton in Philadelphia. Barton encouraged his strong interest in natural history - John Torrey
John Torrey (August 15, 1796 - March 10, 1873) was an American botanist. Torrey was born in New York. When he was 15 or 16 years of age his father received a prison appointment at Greenwich, and there he made the acquaintance of Amos Eaton, a pioneer of natural history studies in America. He thus learned the elements of botany, as well as something of mineralogy and chemistry. In 1815 he began the study of medicine, qualifying in 1818. - Beatrix Potter
(Helen) Beatrix Potter was an English author and illustrator, botanist, and conservationist, best known for her children's books, which featured animal characters such as Peter Rabbit. - John Hill
John Hill (c. 1716 - November 21, 1775), called from his Swedish honours, "Sir" John Hill, English author, son of the Rev. Theophilus Hill, is said to have been born in Peterborough. He was apprenticed to an apothecary and on the completion of his apprenticeship he set up in a small shop in St Martin's Lane, Westminster. He also travelled over the country in search of rare herbs, with a view to publishing a "hortus siccus", but the plan failed. - Hugh Falconer
Hugh Falconer MD, FRS (February 29 1808 - January 31 1865), was a distinguished Scottish geologist, botanist, palaeontologist and paleoanthropologist. He studied the flora, fauna and geology of India, Assam and Burma, and made the first discovery of the modern evolutionary theory of punctuated equilibrium. He may have been the first to discover a fossil ape, as well. Falconer was the youngest son of David Falconer of Forres, Elginshire. - William Curtis
William Curtis (January 11, 1746 - July 7, 1799) was an English botanist who was born at Alton, Hampshire. Curtis was demonstrator of plants and Praefectus Horti at the Chelsea Physic Garden from 1771 to 1777. He published "The Botanical Magazine" (founded in 1787) and "Flora Londinensis" (6 volumes, 1777-1798) - a pioneering work in that it devoted itself to urban nature. He established his own London Botanic Garden at Lambeth in 1779, … - George Bentham
George Bentham CMG, FRS (September 22, 1800-September 10, 1884) was an English botanist, characterized by Duane Isely as "the premier systematic botanist of the nineteenth century". He was born in Stoke near Portsmouth. His father, Sir Samuel Bentham, was the only brother of Jeremy Bentham. George Bentham had neither a school nor a college education, but at an early age acquired the power of giving sustained and concentrated attention to any subject that occupied him. - Archibald Menzies
Archibald Menzies (15 March 1754 - 15 February 1842) was a Scottish surgeon and naturalist. Menzies was born at Easter Stix (or Styx) in the parish of Weem, in Perthshire. He studied botany and medicine in Edinburgh, and later became assistant to a surgeon in Caernarvon. He joined the Royal Navy and served on the Halifax Station in Nova Scotia. In 1786 Menzies (pronounced "Ming-iss", see Yogh) was appointed surgeon on board "Prince of Wales", … - John Gerard
John Gerard (Nantwich, 1545 - February, 1611/12 in London) was an English botanist famous for his herbal garden. After being educated in Willaston near Nantwich he started to study medicine and travelled widely as a ship's surgeon. From 1577 on, he supervised the gardens of Lord Burleigh in London. In 1595 Gerard became a member of the Court of Assistants in the Barber-Surgeon's company, in 1597 he was appointed Junior Warden of the Barber-Surgeons, … - Wade Davis
Edmund Wade Davis (born December 14 1953 in West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) is a noted anthropologist and ethnobotanist whose work has usually focused on the observation and analysis of the customs, beliefs, and social relations of indigenous cultures in North and South America, particularly the traditional uses and beliefs associated with plants with psychoactive properties. - Joseph Pitton de Tournefort
Joseph Pitton de Tournefort was a French botanist, notable as the first to make a clear definition of the concept of genus for plants. - James Edward Smith
Sir James Edward Smith (December 2, 1759 - March 17, 1828) was an English botanist and founder of the Linnean Society. Smith was born in Norwich in 1759, the son of a wealthy wool merchant. He displayed a precocious interest in the natural world. During the early 1780s he enrolled in the medical course at the University of Edinburgh where he studied chemistry under Prof Joseph Black and natural history under Prof John Walker.
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