David Gamman Frodin

David Gamman Frodin (8 April 1940, Chicago – 12 August 2019, London, UK) was an American botanist, known as a leading expert on the flora of Papua New Guinea.

Biography His parents, Reuben Sanford Frodin Jr. (1912–2010) and Rebecca Durand Hayward (1911–1990), married in 1937 in Chicago. At the University of Chicago, Reuben S. Frodin Jr. studied law and Rebecca Hayward Durand studied linguistics. At age 11, David G. Frodin moved with his parents and sister from Chicago to Albany, New York, where he attended the Albany Academy for Boys. In 1957, his father received a Fulbright scholarship to teach at Australia's University of New South Wales. At age 17 David Frodin enrolled at the Sydney Boys High School, where he studied for a year and developed an interest in tropical flora. He received in 1963 his bachelor's degree in botany from the University of Chicago. He received two master of science degrees in botany: the first in 1964 from the University of Tennessee and the second in 1965 from the University of Liverpool. After the expiration of his contract with the Division of Botany, Office of Forests, Frodin visited Australian herbaria with dissertation The complex of Cephaloschefflera in Schefflera under the supervision of E. J. H. Corner. In 1985 he returned to the United States as a research associate under Benjamin Clemens Stone in the botany department of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science. After a few years Frodin became the botany department's collections manager, but in 1989 Frodin's departmental position was eliminated. From 1989 to 1993 he took various assignments in the United Kingdom, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea. In 1993 he was appointed a senior scientific officer at the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. In 1994 he had a heart attack followed by quadruple bypass surgery, but he recovered and remained highly productive.

Eponyms (Araliaceae) Frodinia Lowry & G.M.Plunkett (Araliaceae) Aralia frodiniana J.Wen (Araliaceae) Schefflera frodiniana Bernardi (Euphorbiaceae) Glochidion frodinii Airy Shaw (Euphorbiaceae) Phyllanthus frodinii Airy Shaw (Lauraceae) Cinnamomum frodinii Kosterm. (Melastomataceae) Medinilla frodinii Bodegom (Rubiaceae) Psychotria frodinii Sohmer

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