Sir Ghillean Prance | |
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Born | Ghillean Tolmie Prance 13 July 1937 [1] |
Nationality | British |
Alma mater | Keble College, University of Oxford |
Known for | Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (1988–1999) [2] |
Awards |
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Scientific career | |
Fields | Botany |
Institutions | New York Botanical Garden (1963–1988) [1] |
Thesis | A taxonomic study of the Chrysobalanaceae (1963) |
Website | edenproject |
Sir Ghillean Tolmie Prance FRS FLS FRSB (born 13 July 1937) is a prominent British botanist and ecologist [3] who has published extensively [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [ excessive citations ] on the taxonomy of families such as Chrysobalanaceae and Lecythidaceae, but drew particular attention in documenting the pollination ecology of Victoria amazonica . [16] [17] Prance is a former Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. [2]
Prance was born on 13 July 1937 in Brandeston, Suffolk, England. [1] He was educated at Malvern College and Keble College, Oxford. [18] In 1957, he achieved BSc Biology. In 1963 he received a D. Phil. in Forest Botany from the Commonwealth Forestry Institute, Oxford. [1]
Prance worked from 1963 at The New York Botanical Garden, initially as a research assistant and, on his departure in 1988, as Director of the Institute of Economic Botany and Senior Vice-President for Science. [1] Much of his career at the New York Botanical Garden was spent conducting extensive fieldwork in the Amazon region of Brazil. In 1973 he coordinated the first Botany Postgraduate Degree held in the Amazon, at National Institute of Amazonian Research, in Manaus. [19] He was Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew from 1988 to 1999. [2]
He has remained very active in his retirement, notably involving himself with the Eden Project. Prance, a devout Christian, was the chair of A Rocha [20] and was president of Christians in Science 2002–08. [21]
He is actively involved on environmental issues, a trustee of the Amazon Charitable Trust, [18] and a Vice-President of the Nature in Art Trust. [22] He has been president of the UK Wild Flower Society for several years.[ when? ] [23] [24]
Prance was knighted in 1995. He has been a Fellow of the Linnean Society since 1961, and served as its president in the years 1997–2000. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1993, and was awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour in 1999. [2] He was awarded the Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1994. [25]
In 2000 he was made a Commander of the Order of the Southern Cross by the President of Brazil. [18] In 2012 he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays and Neck Ribbon by the Government of Japan. [26]
Two photographic portraits of Prance are held at the National Portrait Gallery, London. [27]
In 1984, botanist Dieter Carl Wasshausen published Pranceacanthus , a genus of flowering plants from Brazil and Bolivia belonging to the family Acanthaceae and named after Prance. [28]
A biography of Prance was written by Clive Langmead in 2001. [3]
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 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.
Victoria amazonica is a species of flowering plant, the second largest in the water lily family Nymphaeaceae. It is called uape jacana in Brazil and Atun Sisac in Inca (Quechua). Its native region is tropical South America, specifically Guyana and the Amazon Basin.
The Lecythidaceae comprise a family of about 20 genera and 250–300 species of woody plants native to tropical South America, Africa, Asia and Australia.
Bistorta vivipara is a perennial herbaceous flowering plant in the knotweed and buckwheat family Polygonaceae, commonly known as alpine bistort. Scientific synonyms include Bistorta vivipara and Polygonum viviparum. It is common all over the high Arctic through Europe, North America, incl. Greenland, and temperate and tropical Asia. Its range stretches further south in high mountainous areas such as the Alps, Carpathians, Pyrenees, Caucasus, Alaska and the Tibetan Plateau.
William Thomas Stearn was a British botanist. Born in Cambridge in 1911, he was largely self-educated and developed an early interest in books and natural history. His initial work experience was at a Cambridge bookshop, but he also had a position as an assistant in the university botany department. At the age of 29 he married Eldwyth Ruth Alford, who later became his collaborator, and he died in London in 2001.
Grias haughtii is a species of woody plant in the Monkeypot family Lecythidaceae. It is found only in Colombia in non-flooded lowland forests. Its most remarkable feature is its leaves, which can be up to 5.5 feet in length by 16.5 inches in width. It also produces exceptionally large seeds, up to 2.7 inches (69 mm) in length by one inch (25 mm) in diameter.
Parinari is a genus of plant in the family Chrysobalanaceae.
Roupala is a Neotropical genus of woody shrubs and trees in the plant family Proteaceae. Its 34 species are generally found in forests from sea level to 4000 m altitude from Mexico to Argentina.
Mark Wayne Chase is a US-born British botanist. He is noted for work in plant classification and evolution, and one of the instigators of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group-classification for flowering plants which is partly based on DNA studies. In particular he has researched orchids, and currently investigates ploidy and hybridization in Nicotiana.
Frank Nigel Hepper FLS FIBiol was an English botanist, best known for his work as editor of The Flora of West Tropical Africa.
This is a list of Directors of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew:
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.
João Murça Pires (1917-1994) was a Brazilian botanist, who worked principally at the Instituto Agronômico do Norte.
Lettice Digby was a British cytologist, botanist and malacologist. Her work provided the first demonstration that a fertile polyploid hybrid had formed between two cultivated plant species.
Brian Morey Boom is an American botanist who specializes in the flora of the Guianas and the Caribbean, the family Rubiaceae, ethnobotany, and economic botany.
Scott Alan Mori was a swiss and american botanist and plant collector. He specialized in the systematics and ecology of neotropical Lecythidaceae and Amazonian and Guianian floristics.
Michael Jeffrey Balick is an American ethnobotanist, economic botanist, and pharmacognosist, known as a leading expert on medicinal and toxic plants, biocultural conservation and the plant family Arecaceae (palms).
Grenville 'Gren' Llewellyn Lucas was a British botanist, conservationist, and Keeper of the Herbarium and Library at Kew Gardens.
Pranceacanthus is a monotypic genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Acanthaceae. It only contains one known species, Pranceacanthus coccineusWassh.