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Scholarship to honour pioneering UNE botany researcher

August 15, 2006

PlantSchol.thumb.JPGWith the help of the NSW Department of Environment and Conservation, The University of New England is establishing a new scholarship that recognises the University’s key role in describing and conserving the native plants of north-eastern NSW.

The scholarship will be named in honour of John Williams, UNE’s founding lecturer in plant taxonomy, and will be awarded to a postgraduate student undertaking research on Australian native plant biodiversity.

Associate Professor Peter Clarke from UNE Botany said the J.B Williams Plant Biodiversity Scholarship would celebrate Dr Williams’s enormous contribution to the cataloguing of plant biodiversity in north-eastern NSW, while recognising the amount of work still to be done. “John Williams collected more than 11,000 specimens now in UNE’s N.C.W. Beadle Herbarium,” Dr Clarke said. “UNE researchers are still, however, discovering new species – and new populations of rare species – in this richly diverse environment, and there are many more wonders waiting to be discovered.”

“Scientific understanding of biodiversity rests on a legacy of natural history research that is left to universities and the broader community by scientists such as John Williams,” Dr Clarke continued. “Currently, researchers in UNE’s School of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resources Management are working with the Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) on a number of projects aimed at developing best-practice management of biodiversity in National Parks and other conservation reserves.”

Dr Tony Fleming, the Deputy Director of DEC’s National Parks and Wildlife Division, visited UNE earlier this year to launch a special issue (Volume 127) of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society containing a collection of papers, dedicated to John Williams, on the biology and ecology of the Gibraltar Range National Park. (Edited by Dr Clarke and Dr Peter Myerscough from the University of Sydney, the volume includes eight papers by UNE researchers.) Dr Fleming, who is a graduate of UNE and a former student of Dr Williams, then presented a cheque for $15,000 to the Vice-Chancellor of UNE, Professor Alan Pettigrew, to initiate the J.B. Williams Plant Biodiversity Scholarship fund.

Dr Williams’s widow, Mrs Beth Williams, and some of his many friends, attended the presentation ceremony.

“DEC’s generous gift will form the basis of the J.B. Williams Scholarship fund,” Dr Clarke said, “and will be supplemented by other gifts to Botany. We hope to be able to award the first Plant Biodiversity Scholarship next year.

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here shows (from left) UNE's Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Peter Flood, Professor Alan Pettigrew, Mrs Beth Williams, Dr Tony Fleming, and Associate Professor Peter Clarke.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at August 15, 2006 02:56 PM