The Linnean Society of London is a learned society dedicated to the study and dissemination of information concerning natural history, evolution, and taxonomy. It possesses several important biological specimen, manuscript and literature collections, and publishes academic journals and books on plant and animal biology. The society also awards a number of prestigious medals and prizes.
George Bentham was an English botanist, described by the weed botanist Duane Isely as "the premier systematic botanist of the nineteenth century". Born into a distinguished family, he initially studied law, but had a fascination with botany from an early age, which he soon pursued, becoming president of the Linnaean Society in 1861, and a fellow of the Royal Society in 1862. He was the author of a number of important botanical works, particularly flora. He is best known for his taxonomic classification of plants in collaboration with Joseph Dalton Hooker, his Genera Plantarum (1862–1883). He died in London in 1884.
Asa Gray is considered the most important American botanist of the 19th century. His Darwiniana was considered an important explanation of how religion and science were not necessarily mutually exclusive. Gray was adamant that a genetic connection must exist between all members of a species. He was also strongly opposed to the ideas of hybridization within one generation and special creation in the sense of its not allowing for evolution. He was a strong supporter of Darwin, although Gray's theistic evolution was guided by a Creator.
Sir Arthur George Tansley FLS, FRS was an English botanist and a pioneer in the science of ecology.
Oswald Heer, Swiss geologist and naturalist, was born at Niederuzwil in Canton of St. Gallen and died in Lausanne.
Harriet Baldwin Creighton was an American botanist, geneticist and educator.
Sir Albert Charles Seward FRS was a British botanist and geologist.
Lilian Suzette Gibbs (1870–1925) was a British botanist who worked for the British Museum in London and an authority on mountain ecosystems.
The Botanical Magazine; or Flower-Garden Displayed, is an illustrated publication which began in 1787. The longest running botanical magazine, it is widely referred to by the subsequent name Curtis's Botanical Magazine.
Robert Wight was a Scottish surgeon in the East India Company, whose professional career was spent entirely in southern India, where his greatest achievements were in botany – as an economic botanist and leading taxonomist in south India. He contributed to the introduction of American cotton. As a taxonomist he described 110 new genera and 1267 new species of flowering plants. He employed Indian botanical artists to illustrate many plants collected by himself and Indian collectors he trained. Some of these illustrations were published by William Hooker in Britain, but from 1838 he published a series of illustrated works in Madras including the uncoloured, six-volume Icones Plantarum Indiae Orientalis (1838–53) and two hand-coloured, two-volume works, the Illustrations of Indian Botany (1838–50) and Spicilegium Neilgherrense (1845–51). By the time he retired from India in 1853 he had published 2464 illustrations of Indian plants. The standard author abbreviation Wight is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
William C Carruthers was a British botanist and paleobotanist.
William James Beal was an American botanist. He was a pioneer in the development of hybrid corn and the founder of the W. J. Beal Botanical Garden.
Hewett Cottrell Watson was a phrenologist, botanist and evolutionary theorist. He was born in Firbeck, near Rotherham, Yorkshire, and died at Thames Ditton, Surrey.
The Botanical Society of America (BSA) represents professional and amateur botanists, researchers, educators and students in over 80 countries of the world. It functions as a United States nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership society.
James Eustace Bagnall ALS was an English naturalist with a particular interest in botany, especially bryology. He was the author of the first Flora of Warwickshire (VC38) in 1891. A noted bryologist, he wrote the Handbook of Mosses in the Young Collector Series, various editions of which were published between 1886 and 1910.
William Hunt Painter was an English botanist who made a significant contribution to the science of Derbyshire vascular plant flora. He was a keen and wide-ranging collector of plant specimens, and was a member of the Botanical Exchange Club. In 1889 he published the first in a series of four books, all by different authors and spanning 120 years, all called The Flora of Derbyshire.
Frederick Charles Newcombe (1858–1927) was an American botanist, and the first editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Botany.
Harley Harris Bartlett was an American botanist, biochemist, and anthropologist. He was an expert in tropical botany and an authority on Batak language and culture. The standard author abbreviation Bartlett is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
Oswald Tippo was an American botanist and educator. Tippo became the first chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1970.
The Society for Ethnobotany is an international learned society covering the fields of ethnobotany and economic botany. It was established in 1959. In 2022 the Society voted to change its name from the Society for Economic Botany to the Society for Ethnobotany, going into effect in June 2023. Its official journal is Economic Botany, published on their behalf by Springer Science+Business Media and the New York Botanical Garden Press. The society also publishes a biannual newsletter, Plants and People. The society organizes annual meetings at different locations around the world, where it awards the prize of Distinguished Ethnobotanist to particularly meritorious individuals.
