Brian Frederick Mathew MBE, VMH is a British botanist, born in the village of Limpsfield, Surrey, England.
After leaving school he spent his compulsory military service in the Royal Air Force, engaged in a then secret project involving Britain's atomic bomb.
These expeditions convinced Mathew that his interests lay more in botany than horticulture, and he found employment in the herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
His subsequent career at Kew was largely based on this group of plants, particularly the families Iridaceae, Liliaceae sensu lato and Amaryllidaceae.
He has written that "[w]ith my combined interest in horticulture and taxonomy, I have tried to pitch my publications at a level which will to some extent appeal to a wide audience in both fields."
[4] In 1992, he was awarded the Herbert Medal by the International Bulb Society – only one recipient is honoured worldwide each year.
[5] He continued to write, with some 13 authored or co-authored books published between 1993 and 2005, many on bulbs or bulbous genera, such as Lilies : a romantic history with a guide to cultivation (1993) or The Cyclamen of Turkey (2001, with Neriman Özhatay).