Fagg, Murray Allan (1947 - )

Born Adelaide, South Australia in 1947. Resident of Canberra, ACT, since 1970.

Had a keen interest in botany and Australian plants from an early age and worked at the State Herbarium of South Australia during his vacations while a student at Unley High School and Adelaide University. Also had university vacation jobs at the herbaria at Alice Springs (1968-69) and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney (1969-70).

His first full-time job was with the Herbarium (CBG) of the Australian National Botanic Gardens (then called Canberra Botanic Gardens) from 1970, becoming Director of Visitor Services in the late 1980s. He was also a member of the Executive of the Centre for Australian National Biodiversity Research (CANBR) and the Australian National Herbarium (a facility managed jointly by CSIRO and the Australian National Botanic Gardens).

In 2000 he moved to the Botanical Information Group of the Australian National Botanic Gardens to manage the electronic dissemination of botanical information and the image/photograph collection and also to manage the website for the ANBG and CANBR.

He retired in 2012, becoming an Honorary Associate of both the Botanic Gardens and the Australian National Herbarium.

He has published a range of botanical-horticultural books in collaboration with John Wrigley, starting with Australian Native Plants in 1979, now in its fifth edition. His line illustrations and photographs are used throughout these books. He has also published directories of Australian botanic gardens. Most recently he has published, with John Wrigley, a biological/social-history book on the eucalypts.

He has a private collection of about 40,000 photographs of Australian plants and vegetation which have been used extensively for both popular and scientific publications and interactive CDs. He has made many of these photos available to the Australian Plant Image Index maintained by the Australian National Botanic Gardens (www.anbg.gov.au/photo/).

Herbarium collections: early collections 1963-1970 lodged at AD (Adelaide) some dups at CANB and CBG (Canberra), 1970s lodged at CBG (Canberra), after 1980 the vouchers for photographs taken by M.Fagg are lodged as collections by Purdie, R.W.

Publications

Source: Personal Communication

Map of collecting locations for Murray Fagg: