Lawrence Alexander Sidney Johnson

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Lawrence Alexander Sidney Johnson, (26 June 1925 – 1 August 1997) known as Lawrie Johnson, was an Australian taxonomic botanist. He worked at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, for the whole of his professional career, as a botanist (1948-1972), Director (1972-1985) and Honorary Research Associate (1986-1997).

Alone or in collaboration with colleagues, he distinguished and described four new families of vascular plants, 33 new genera, and new 286 species (including posthumous publications), and reclassified another 395 species.

Of the families he described, Rhynchocalycaceae (with B. G. Briggs, 1985) is accepted by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG); Hopkinsiaceae and Lyginiaceae, which he and B. G. Briggs proposed in 2000 be carved out of Anarthriaceae, have not been accepted by the APG.

Lawrie Johnson succumbed to cancer in 1997.

[edit] External links

• Biographical memoir by associate Barbara G. Briggs