Sir Ghillean Prance has spend the past thirty years exploring the Amazon rainforest, conducting fieldwork and botanical exploration. He was based at the New York Botanical Garden for over twenty years, from whence his fieldwork in the Amazon was conducted. In 1973 Prance coordinated the first botany Postgraduate Degree to be held in the Amazon. From 1988 Prance was Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, until his retirement. Even in retirement, however, Prance acted as Science Director of the Eden Project, remains a trustee of the Amazon Charitable Trust and is president of the UK Wild Flower Society. Throughout Prance’s extensive career he has written thirteen books, edited several more and published over three-hundred papers on plant systematics, plant ecology, ethnobotany and conservation, as well as lecturing at various universities. Prance’s lifelong devotion and outstanding contributions to botany and ecology have been rewarded numerously, such as with the Distinguished Service Award of the New York Botanical Garden, the Patron’s Medal of the Royal Geographic Society, the Royal Horticultural Society’s Victoria Medal of Honour, honorary degrees at eleven international universities and most notably with a Knighthood in 1995.