Morrison, David A.   (1958 -  )

Born on 1 January, 1958.

In his own words ASBS Newsletter 1991:

David was born on New Year's day of 1958, although neither the doctors nor his mother planned it that way.

He spent the first five years of his life in the country of New South Wales, before his family moved to Sydney. He has not managed to escape since then.

He attended Berala Primary School, where he spent far too much time worrying about his school work. This was followed by a stint at Birrong Boys High School, and (after his family moved house) Baulkham Hills High School. The latter school was much more satisfactory, not the least because it was co-educational.

He then went to the University of Sydney, with the intention of becoming a research physicist. He quickly realised that his grasp of mathematics was not good enough to allow him to contribute anything new to this field, so he decided to become a zoologist instead. He then discovered that he didn't actually like zoologists very much, so he became a botanist as a last resort.

Having completed an undergraduate degree with honours in 1979 (working on Leptospermum), he immediately embarked on an ecological Ph.D. project at the same university (on the reproductive biology of Acacia).

This project dragged on for much longer than it should have done; so, after his scholarship ran out, he worked on an ABRS grant for a year, and then spent a year and a half at the National Herbarium of New South Wales.

Having finally completed his thesis in 1986, he took a job as a lecturer at the New South Wales Institute of Technology, which has since mutated into the University of Technology, Sydney.

David has never been able to make up his mind whether to be a taxonomist or an ecologist, so he continues to moonlight in both areas. His systematic work has mainly been in the Goodeniaceae and Acacia, but he has recently become entangled in the Epacridaceae and Proteaceae.

He met his wife, Louisa, while they were both working at the National Herbarium of NSW (which is a lot more romantic than it sounds); and their baby daughter, Holly, is a lot more normal than her genealogy would lead you to think.

January 1984 - February 1986
The University of Sydney

January 1986 - December 2002
University of Technology Sydney

January 2003 - July 2014
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Department of Biomedical Sciences and Veterinary Public Health, Uppsala, Sweden

July 2014 - onwards
Uppsala University Department of Organismal Biology,
Uppsala, Sweden.

Source: Extracted from:
Austral. Syst. Bot. Soc. Newsletter 66 (March 1991) p.22
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David-Morrison-19/11
Portrait Photo: viewed 2025, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David-Morrison-19

Collecting localities for 'Morrison, D.A.' from AVH (2025)

Data from 40 specimens