Ronald William John Keay (20 May 1920 – 7 April 1998) was a British botanist, who did much of his work in tropical Africa. Keay was educated at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

. He was an expert in West African forest flora working at the

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,100 ...

, and at the Forest Herbarium Ibadan (FHI), part of the

Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria (FRIN) is the Nigerian Government agency that is responsible for forestry research. It is headquartered in Jericho Ibadan. FRIN was established as the Federal Department of Forestry Research in 1954. Th ...

(FRIN), and was director of that institute from 1960 to 1962. He collected specimens in Rhodesia, Nigeria, West Cameroon, the Congo, Rhodesia and Zambia. During the 1970s and '80s he was a member, council member, treasurer and vice president of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

. After his retirement from the Royal Society he served as president of the

Institute of Biology The Institute of Biology (IoB) was a professional body for biologists, primarily those working in the United Kingdom. The Institute was founded in 1950 by the Biological Council: the then umbrella body for Britain's many learned biological societies ...

and also the treasurer of the

Linnean Society of London The Linnean Society of London is a learned society dedicated to the study and dissemination of information concerning natural history, evolution, and taxonomy. It possesses several important biological specimen, manuscript and literature colle ...

Publications

Books

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Conference proceedings

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Species named in his honour

* '' Habenaria keayi'' Summerh.
Bot. Mus. Leafl. 14: 217 (1951).
* '' Ledermanniella keayi'' (G.Taylor) C.Cusset, Adansonia sér. 2, 14(2): 274 (1974). (basionym: ''

Inversodicraea ''Inversodicraea'' are a genus of flowering plants in the family Podostemaceae, found in Africa. They are confined to areas that receive a spray of water from waterfalls, and some species are confined to a single waterfall. Species Currently acc ...

keayi'' G.Taylor
Bull. Brit. Mus. (Nat. Hist.), Bot. 1: 78 (1953)Fig. 14

References

External links

*
Keay, Ronald William John (1920-1998)

in libraries (

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCL ...

catalog) {{DEFAULTSORT:Keay, Ronald William John 1920 births 1998 deaths British botanists Alumni of the University of Oxford British expatriates in Nigeria