Sir Geoffrey Evans CIE (1883–1963) was a botanist who was Economic Botanist and acting Director at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Evans was born in Walmersley, near Bury, Lancashire, England, on 26 June 1883.[1] He was educated in Bury, Lancashire, and at Downing College, Cambridge, where he received a Diploma in Agriculture in 1905.[2]
After working at the Agricultural Department of the University of Cambridge, he was in the Indian Agricultural Service from 1906 to 1923.[1] [2] From 1927 to 1938 he was Principal of the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture in Trinidad,[3] and worked from there in Australia, Fiji and New Guinea.[2]
Evans was a Member of the British Guiana Refugee Commission,[2] a Member of the Commission on Higher Education in West Africa from 1942 to 1943[4] [5] and Chairman of the Commission for Settlement in British Guiana and British Honduras.[2]
In 1938 Evans joined the staff of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew,[6] where he was Economic Botanist (1938–1954) and, from 1941 to 1943, acting Director.[1] [2] [7] He can be seen in the short colour film World Garden by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth in 1942.[8]
He died at Mayfield, Sussex, on 16 August 1963.[1] His papers, covering the period 1906 to 1955, are held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.[2] A portrait of Evans by Walter Stoneman, made in 1948, is held at the National Portrait Gallery, London.[9]