Herbert Kenneth Airy Shaw

Herbert Kenneth Airy Shaw (7 April 1902 – 19 August 1985) was a notable English botanist and classicist. He worked at Kew Gardens, as was an expert on tropical Asian botany and on entomology. The genus Airyantha is named for him.

Life Airy Shaw was born at The Mount, Grange Road, Woodbridge, Suffolk to a father serving as Second Master at the Woodbridge Grammar School and a mother descended from George Biddell Airy, Astronomer Royal (1835–1881). His younger sister was the illustrator Margaret Olive Milne-Redhead (also known as Olive Shaw). In 1921 he entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, to read classics, but he switched to natural sciences, taking his degree in 1924 and finishing in 1925, having been a student of Humphrey Gilbert-Carter. He was an active member of the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union.

Selected works

The Euphorbiaceae of Borneo, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1975. . The Euphorbiaceae of New Guinea, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1980. . A Dictionary of the Flowering Plants and Ferns, 8th Edition. Cambridge University Press, 1973.