Salvador Rivas Martínez

Salvador Rivas-Martínez (16 July 1935 – 27 August 2020) was a Spanish botanist and geobotanist, long associated with the Complutense University of Madrid. He was a leading figure in Iberian and Mediterranean vegetation science, known for work on vegetation series, bioclimatology, and biogeography, and for promoting conservation-oriented interpretations of plant communities.

Biography

Rivas-Martínez came from a family of botanists: his father, , and his grandfather, , were professors of botany at the Complutense University. As a child he accompanied his father on field trips around Spain during the 1940s and 1950s, building an intimate knowledge of the Iberian flora that underpinned his later career.

He founded or co-founded several periodicals, beginning with Lazaroa (renamed Mediterranean Botany),