David J Mabberley AM, DSc is a British-born Australian botanist, educator and writer. He was consecutively Director of the University of Washington Botanic Gardens (Seattle, United States); Keeper of the Herbarium, Library, Art and Archives at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (United Kingdom); and Executive Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney (Australia). He is now an Emeritus Fellow, Wadham College, University of Oxford (United Kingdom); Emeritus Professor, University of Leiden (the Netherlands); and Adjunct Professor, Macquarie University, Sydney. Among his varied academic interests are the taxonomy of tropical trees and the history of science. He is the author of 23 books including the award-winning Mabberley’s Plant-book: A Portable Dictionary of Plants, Their Classification and Uses and Painting by Numbers: The Life and Art of Ferdinand Bauer.