Richard Bateman

Richard Mark Bateman (born 27 May 1958) is a British botanist and paleobotanist. He was awarded the Bicentenary Medal of the Linnean Society in 1994. He was awarded a DSc from University of London in 2001 for his work on plant phylogenetics and evolution, palaeobotany and palaeoenvironments.

Richard Bateman gained a BSc in Geology in 1981 from Birkbeck, University of London and earned a doctorate in Paleobiology at University of London in 1985. From 1988 to 1991 he was employed a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Paleobiology at the Smithsonian Institution. From 1991 to 1994 he was a Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. He was Principal Scientific Officer at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh from 1994 to 1996, then Head of Science at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh from 1996 to 1999. He served as Keeper of Botany (Head of the Botany Department) at the Natural History Museum from 1999 to 2004, and was an Individual Merit Researcher there from 2004 to 2006. He was Head of Policy for the Biosciences Federation from 2006 to 2007. He is currently an Honorary Research Fellow at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.

He has over 300 publications which extend from evolutionary-developmental genetics and evolutionary theory through speciation and phylogenetics of orchids to anatomical palaeobotany.