David Galloway
David Galloway is a real New Zealander born in the little town of Invercargill at the southernmost coast of the South Island in 1942. The wild and magnificent Lord of the Ring scenery from the South Island must have attracted the young David’s interest for nature and mountains, visions that came to form his mature life. He studied at the university of Otago in the beautiful little town of Dunedin, where he got a Ph. D. in Biochemistry. Circumstance in the encounter with local botanists, however, made the young Ph. D. to turn over to botany and from 1972 until 1982 David was member of the staff in the Botany Division, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), at Lincoln, New Zealand.
It was during this period of his academic career that David came in contact with scientists abroad allowing him also to spend time over seas in the Natural History Museum in London. This connection, combined with his wife Patricia’s international career as an operatic singer, made and opportunity for David to find a position in London. From 1982 to 1987 he was assigned a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Botany at the Natural History Museum, and from 1987 to 1994 he advanced to Head of the Lichen Division.
During 22 years at the Natural History Museum David made a marvellous scientific career publishing a large quantity of publications of mainly systematics and biogeography of lichens. His life’s deeds until present was recently presented in volume 95 of Bibliotheca Lichenologica where a publication list comprised 319 papers of which several are very comprehensive, i.e. the first edition of Flora of New Zealand, Lichens (1985), Tropical Lichens: their Systematics, Conservation, and Ecology (1991, symposium volume), and New Zealand Lichens, checklist, Key and Glossary (1997, with W. M. Malcolm). During this super active time of his life between 1987 and 1992 David was also President of the International Association for Lichenology. In 1994 David returned to his beloved New Zealand where he first settled in working as a Consultant lichenologist at Roxburgh. Later he became associated as a research-worker at Landcare Research in Dunedin.
The medal has always two sides and all the hard work has also led to some health problems for David who, however, has never surrended a doctor’s order completely and recently we could all see the result of his hard labour in the publication of the second revised edition of the Flora of New Zealand Lichens. 2nd edition. Lichen-forming and lichenicolous fungi. Manaaki Whenua Press, Lincoln (2008). It is an impressive 2261 pp beautiful work of two volumes, comprising 1707 taxa and 354 genera of the lichenized fungi of New Zealand. Only the carefully collected bibliography is an impressive documentation of 181 pp. We congratulate David Galloway for the Acharius award, a very worthy carrier of a price he was once one of the initiators to award persons for life long and outstanding scientific contributions in lichenology. David John Galloway now belongs in this small assembly of scientists.
– Ingvar Kärnefelt, Lund (18 July 2008)