Professor David J. Mabberley AM is a British-born, Australian educator and author. 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 (United Kingdom) and Executive Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. He is now an Emeritus Fellow, Wadham College, University of Oxford (United Kingdom), Professor Extraordinary, University of Leiden (The Netherlands) and Adjunct Professor, Macquarie University, Sydney. Among his varied academic interests are the taxonomy of tropical trees, notably citrus, and the history of science and botanical art. Internationally he is perhaps best known as author of the award-winning Mabberley’s plant-book: a portable dictionary of plants, their classification and uses, now in its fourth edition (2017). Of his six books on botanical art, Joseph Banks; Florilegium (Thames & Hudson) and Painting by Numbers: the life and art of Ferdinand Bauer (NewSouth) are also published this year.