Paul Westmacott Richards

Paul Westmacott Richards (9 December 1908 – 4 October 1995) was a British botanist.

Life Richard's father (Harold Meredith Richards (1864-1942)) was a civil servant medical administrator from a Welsh family. His mother, Mary (‘May’) Cecilia (née Todd, 1871-1941) was interested in plants, and he followed in her footsteps from childhood. He was especially keen on bryophytes and lichens. Richard was born in Walton-on-the-Hill, Surrey but when he was 3, the family moved back to Cardiff since his father took the post of deputy chairman of the Welsh Insurance Commission. His secondary school was Cardiff High School until 1920, when the family moved to London because his father now had a post at the Ministry of Health. Richards then attended the private University College School until 1925, and then University College London (1925-27) He joined the British Bryological Society in 1923. This was considered the first modern book about the botany and ecology of rain forests since the 1930s, so they were little-known to science in the 1950s and the book had considerable influence.

In 1949 he moved from Cambridge to be Chair of Botany in the University College of North Wales, Bangor, and remained there until he retired in 1976.

He helped found the North Wales Naturalists’ Trust (now North Wales Wildlife Trust) in 1962 and chaired it from 1969 - 1972. Richards moved back to live in Cambridge after he retired.

Publications P. W. Richards (1952) The Tropical Rain Forest