After his National Service he went up to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, graduating in 1957.
[2] He then worked as a taxonomist at the Herbarium, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, until he retired in 1994.
He wrote on Botanical nomenclature and in 1969 translated 'Flowering plants: origin and dispersal' by Armen Takhtajan into English.
[2] After the International Compositae Conference of July 1994 he moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, where he was based at the Komarov Botanical Institute.
He worked with Takhtajan in securing funds to renovate its herbarium and library building.