Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria |
Born in Adelaide, SA, on 9 February, 1950;
Mike was awarded his Bachelor of Science
degree with First Class Honours in 1971 from the
University of Adelaide, where he then proceeded
to complete his Ph.D. in plant ecology, with the
thesis “Long term change in arid zone vegetation
at Koonamore, South Australia”.
He was
appointed in 1975 as a botanist by the Australian
National Botanic Gardens, Canberra, where he
switched the focus of his research from ecology
to systematics and in particular to the systematics
of the Australian legume tribes Bossiaeeae and
Mirbelieae, the "egg and bacon peas". Mike
commenced a taxonomic revision of the genus
Daviesia and gradually became the foremost
authority on the taxonomy of the Mirbelieae.
He has continued to work on the taxonomy of
the Mirbelieae in parallel with other projects
and had published 44 taxonomic papers on this
group by 2011, in which over 200 new taxa and new
combinations have been published.
Early on he started applying a then new method (which soon came to be known as
cladistic analysis) to the study of the evolutionary
history of his egg and bacon peas. Mike was
also impressed by the potential of cladistic
biogeographic techniques for reconstructing
biogeographic history that were being actively
developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In 1981-82, Mike was posted to London as
Australian Botanical Liaison Officer at the
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. His ABLO research
project mostly involved the identification and
photography of type specimens of Mirbelieae and
Bossiaeeae held in European herbaria.
Mike also extended his alpha-taxonomic work
to the description of new species in other taxa,
particularly his first botanical love, Eucalyptus, and the systematics
of the subtribe Embothriinae (Proteaceae), including the genus Telopea.
In the 1990s, Mike appreciated the enormous
potential of the new field of molecular systematics
and initiated a project to test morphology-based
cladograms of genera of Mirbelieae and Bossiaeeae
using phylogenetic analyses of molecular data
sets. In pursuing this project, Mike formed a
collaborative relationship with Dr Lyn Cook that matured
into an extraordinarily productive and innovative
research partnership. Their extensive co-authored
papers have covered an impressively diverse
range of areas within the fields of phylogenetic
and biogeographic methodology, systematics,
historical biogeography and evolutionary ecology.
In 1990, Mike took up a lecturer's position
in the Division of Botany and Zoology at the
Australian National University ("BoZo"), where
he smoothly progressed to the position of Reader
and was then awarded a personal Chair in 2004.
Mike's term as a Head of School
of the Division of Botany and Zoology at ANU
(2000-03) was a challenging period and Mike steered
BoZo successfully through these difficulties at
the same time as maintaining his own research
productivity and enhancing the position of
systematic and evolutionary biology in the
Division's staffing and teaching programs.
In retirement Mike moved from Canberra to Brisbane in early 2020
Mike has served the ASBS as Public Officer
(1986-92), Newsletter Editor (1988-92, with
Barbara Barnsley), Councillor (1986-90), Vice
President (1990-92) and President (1992-95).
Source: Extracted from: Peter Westons Burbidge Medal speech, 2011, in:
Australasian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter 147–8 (June-September 2011) p.5-9
Portrait Photo: 2007 by M.Fagg, ANBG Collection.
Data from 19,939 specimens