Peacock, William James (Jim)   (1937 - )

William James (Jim) Peacock was born in Leura, New South Wales, in 1937.

He was educated at the University of Sydney where he received a BSc (Hons) in 1958. (He had a summer vacation job in the Snowy Mountains working for Alex Costin in 1956). His interests were in botany and genetics and after his honours year, he won a CSIRO scholarship for further studies.

He was awarded a PhD from the University of Sydney in 1962.

Peacock began working at CSIRO as a visiting research worker in the Genetics section in 1963. Later that year he moved to the University of Oregon, where he worked as a post-doctoral fellow (1963-64) and visiting associate professor (1964-65). He continued his genetics studies as a research consultant in the biology division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, in 1965.

On returning to Australia and CSIRO, Peacock joined the division of Plant Industry. He worked as a senior research scientist (1965-69), principal research scientist (1969-73), senior principal research scientist (1973-77) and chief research scientist (1977-78). He was chief of the division from 1978 to 2003 and then became a CSIRO fellow.

Peacock was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1976 and served as its president from 2002 to 2006.

From 2006 to 2008, Peacock served as Australia's Chief Scientist.

Source: Extracted from:
https://www.science.org.au/learning/general-audience/history/interviews-australian-scientists/dr-jim-peacock-plant-scientist
https://bourndaeec.nsw.edu.au/bournda-biota/flora/dane-wimbush/
Portrait Photo: 2013 Australian of the Year website.

Collecting localities for 'Peacock, W.J.' from AVH (2022)

Data from 30 specimens