Richard Pankhurst

Richard John Pankhurst (1940 –2013) was a British computer scientist, botanist and academic. From 1963 to 1966 he worked at CERN, then from 1966 to 1974 on computer-aided design at Cambridge University, and from 1974 to 1991 at the Natural History Museum as curator of the British herbarium. In 1991, he became a Principal Scientific Officer at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

He published over fifty peer reviewed papers a year after the species Taraxacum pankhurstianum, endemic to St. Kilda, was named in his honour, for his suggestion that the seed from which it was grown at Edinburgh be collected.

Selected works