R.K. Brummitt

Richard Kenneth "Dick" Brummitt (22 May 1937 – 18 September 2013) was a British botanist. He co-created Authors of Plant Names.

Early life He was born in Liverpool in1937 where he went to university and did his Ph.D. on Calystegia.

Career In 1963 he was employed by the Ministry of Overseas Development working in the African Section at the Herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. He joined the staff of Kew in 1968 working on Leguminosae for Flora Zambesiaca.

He was known for his expertise on Botanical Nomenclature and was awarded the Kew Medal in 1991 for his contributions to nomenclature. From 1975 he was secretary of the Committee for Spermatophyta, which became the Nomenclature Committee for Vascular Plants, until 2011.

He was one of the founders in the 1980s of Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG), and was author of Vascular plant families and genera (1992) and Authors of Plant Names (1992). He worked on the Index to European Taxonomic Literature which became the Kew Record of Taxonomic Literature (1971–2007).

Brummitt retired in 1997 but continued to work in the Herbarium.

Eponymy Calystegia brummittii P.P.A.Ferreira & Sim.-Bianch. and Alchemilla brummittii K.M.Purohit & Panigrahi are named for him.

Personal life Brummitt was married to Hilary Jane Crawford (1945–1988) in 1968 and had three children, Patrick, Neil and Lindsay.

Selected publications Brummitt, R. K. Index to European taxonomic literature. 1966, 1968, 1969 (from 1968 with Ian Keith Ferguson; published in Regnum Vegetabile). Brummitt, R.K. 1992. Vascular plant families and genera. Royal Botanic Garden, Kew Brummitt, R.K. & Powell, C.E, 1992. R. K. Authors of plant names. A list of authors of scientific names of plants, with recommended standard forms of their names, including abbreviations. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 1992 Hollis, S. & Brummitt, R. K., World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions. Plant Taxonomic Database Standards No. 2. Version 1.0. 1992 Published for the International Working Group on Taxonomic Databases for Plant Sciences (TDWG) by the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh Brummitt, R.K. 1997. Taxonomy versus cladonomy, a fundamental controversy in biological systematics. Taxon 46 723–734 Brummitt, R. K. with assistance from F. Pando, S. Hollis, N. A. Brummitt and others. 2001. Plant Taxonomic Database Standards No. 2.ed. 2. World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions, ed. 2. Brummitt, R. K. World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions. TDWG, 2001 Brummitt, Richard K. 2003. How to chop up a tree. Taxon 51 31–41. Brummitt, Richard K. 2003. Further dogged defense of paraphyletic taxa. Taxon 52 803–804