Abercrombie Anstruther Lawson FRSE FLS (13 September 1870 – 26 March 1927) was a botanist, foundation professor of botany at the University of Sydney.
After a year as assistant in botany Lawson spent 1901 at the University of Chicago with Professors John Merle Coulter and Charles Joseph Chamberlain in the new Hull laboratories and was awarded a PhD (1901).
His proposers were Frederick Orpen Bower, Robert Kidston, Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour, and Ramsay Heatley Traquair.
Lawson was well versed in and strongly committed to the theory of Evolution which was then revolutionizing comparative morphology, a major branch of botanical studies.
Insisting on adequate laboratory facilities, he rejected attempts to locate the department in the arts building and soon occupied a large part of the Macleay Museum.
Not long after his arrival in Sydney botany had become a major field of study within the university's science programme and by the early 1920s its first honours students had graduated.
This artistic flair pervaded his private life, and he had a fine collection of antique furniture and English, French and Chinese porcelain, paintings (one by Turner) and etchings.
A significant contribution to the knowledge of the gymnosperms, "The Life-History of Bowenia a genus of Cycads endemic in Australasia", was published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1926.
Before his election as a fellow of the Royal Society, London, could be confirmed, Lawson died on 26 March 1927 in St Luke's Hospital, following an operation for a diseased gall bladder; he was buried in the Presbyterian section of South Head cemetery.