Professor Vernon Heywood
University of Reading
Professor Vernon Heywood is Emeritus Professor in the University of Reading, Honorary Fellow, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh and Honorary Professor in Nanjing (China) and Mendoza (Argentina). A specialist in plant taxonomy and systematics, he has also worked on biodiversity and conservation issues in many parts of the world, particularly in the Mediterranean and has served as a consultant for numerous agencies and advised governments, ministries, universities and NGOs on conservation and biodiversity issues. He also works on developing plant conservation methodologies, especially in situ conservation of species and strategies for the conservation of germplasm of wild species of economic importance, including crop wild relatives and medicinal and aromatic plants; and on the threats to biodiversity posed by Invasive Alien Plants and has prepared Codes of Conduct for horticulture and botanic gardens to combat these threats. He has had a life-long interest in the development and evolving roles botanic gardens and was the founder director of the IUCN Botanic Gardens Conservation Secretariat (later BGCI). As Chief Scientist in IUCN he developed a plant conservation programme and directed projects on centres of plant diversity, extinction rates in tropical forests, species reactions to global change, medicinal plant conservation, and wild relatives of crop species. He co-ordinated and edited the UNEP Global Biodiversity Assessment. His publications include 80 books and over 400 papers in scientific journals.
