This is a list of Directors of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew :
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,100 staff. Its board of trustees is chaired by Dame Amelia Fawcett.
Sir William Jackson Hooker was an English botanist and botanical illustrator, who became the first director of Kew when in 1841 it was recommended to be placed under state ownership as a botanic garden. At Kew he founded the Herbarium and enlarged the gardens and arboretum. The standard author abbreviation Hook. is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
John William Heslop Harrison, (1881–1967) was a professor of Botany at Kings College, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, specialising in the genetics of moths. He is now best remembered for a widely recognised academic fraud.
Sir Edward James Salisbury CBE FRS was an English botanist and ecologist. He was born in Harpenden, Hertfordshire and graduated in botany from University College London in 1905. In 1913, he obtained a D.Sc. with a thesis on fossil seeds and was appointed a senior lecturer at East London College. He returned to University College London as a senior lecturer, from 1924 as a reader in plant ecology and from 1929 as Quain Professor of botany.
The 1893 Index Kewensis (IK), maintained by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, is a publication that aims to register all botanical names for seed plants at the rank of species and genera. It later came to include names of taxonomic families and ranks below that of species.
Sir George King was a British botanist who was appointed superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta in 1871, and became the first director of the Botanical Survey of India from 1890. He was recognised for his work in the cultivation of cinchona and for setting up a system for the inexpensive distribution of the anti-malarial quinine throughout India through the postal system.
Sir William Turner Thiselton-Dyer was a leading British botanist, and the third director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
The Victoria Medal of Honour (VMH) is awarded to British horticulturists resident in the United Kingdom whom the Royal Horticultural Society Council considers deserving of special honour by the Society.
John Patrick Micklethwait Brenan (1917–1985) was a British botanist who became director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Sir Ghillean Tolmie Prance is a prominent British botanist and ecologist who has published extensively on the taxonomy of families such as Chrysobalanaceae and Lecythidaceae, but drew particular attention in documenting the pollination ecology of Victoria amazonica. Prance is a former director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Otto Stapf FRS was an Austrian born botanist and taxonomist, the son of Joseph Stapf, who worked in the Hallstatt salt-mines. He grew up in Hallstatt and later published about the archaeological plant remains from the Late Bronze- and Iron Age mines that had been uncovered by his father.
Sir David Prain was a Scottish botanist who worked in India at the Calcutta Botanical Garden and went on to become Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Francis Wall Oliver FRS was an English botanist whose interests evolved from plant anatomy to palaeobotany to ecology.
William Townsend Aiton was an English botanist.
Sir Arthur William Hill was Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and a noted botanist and taxonomist.
St Anne's Church, Kew, is a parish church in Kew in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. The building, which dates from 1714 and is Grade II* listed, forms the central focus of Kew Green. The raised churchyard, which is on three sides of the church, has two Grade II* listed monuments – the tombs of the artists Johan Zoffany and Thomas Gainsborough. The French Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro (1830–1903), who stayed in 1892 at 10 Kew Green, portrayed St Anne's in his painting Church at Kew (1892).
Sir George Taylor, FRS FRSE FLS LLD was a Scottish botanist.
William Grant Craib was a British botanist. Craib was Regius Professor of Botany at Aberdeen University and later worked at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Elian Emily Collins was an English botanist, naturalist and an early collector of plant specimens in Thailand. She discovered several plant species new to science and had numerous species named after her.