David J. Mabberley AM, DSc is Emeritus Fellow, Wadham College, University of Oxford, UK. He was, consecutively, Director of the University of Washington Botanic Gardens, Seattle, USA; Keeper of the Herbarium, Library, Art and Archives at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK; Executive Director, Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. He held a chair in the University of Leiden, the Netherlands, for twenty-three years and has had visiting posts in the University of Paris; Kuwait University; Universities of Peradeniya and Sri Jawarardenepura, Sri Lanka; University of Sydney; Western Sydney University; and Macquarie University, where he is Adjunct Professor. He has over three hundred publications, ranging over plant ecology and systematics to the history of science and botanical illustration. His most recent books include Botanical Revelation (2019); Mabberley's Plant-book: A Dictionary of Plants, their Classification and Uses (2017); Painting by Numbers: The life and art of Ferdinand Bauer (
