Herbert Kenneth Airy Shaw

Herbert Kenneth Airy Shaw (7 April 1902 – 1985) was a notable English botanist and classicist.

Airy Shaw was born at The Mount, Grange Road, Woodbridge, Suffolk to a father serving as Second Master at the Woodbridge Grammar School and a mother descended from George Biddell Airy, Astronomer Royal (1835-1881). In 1921 he entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, to read classics, but he switched to natural sciences, taking his degree in 1924 and finishing in 1925, then taking a position at Kew Gardens. He became an expert on tropical Asian botany and on entomology.

Selected works

• The Euphorbiaceae of Borneo, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1975. ISBN 978-0-11-241099-7.
• The Euphorbiaceae of New Guinea, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1980. ISBN 978-0-11-241146-8.
• A Dictionary of the Flowering Plants and Ferns, 8th Edition. Cambridge University Press, 1973.

References

• List of Australian Plant Collectors and Illustrators
• Obituary, H. K. Airy Shaw, 1902-1985, by A. Radcliffe-Smith and R. M. Harley