Career
Botanist with the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) Division of Land Research and Regional Survey in Papua New Guinea.
From 1970 to 1998 he was the foundation Curator and Director of the Australian National Wildlife Collection (ANWC) in the CSIRO Division of Wildlife and Ecology, following which he became a Research Fellow there. During this time he led the flora and fauna surveys that helped establish Kakadu National Park and the designation of the wet tropics of north-eastern Queensland as Australia's first World Heritage Site. These surveys resulted in the accession of almost 50,000 specimens to the ANWC, as well as 15,000 samples of frozen tissue for molecular studies.