David Daniel Nicholas Beath[1] (6 September 1960 – 14 January 2013) was a British landscape and wildlife photographer and botanist.

[4] The family had numerous postings to military camps around the world including Singapore in 1966 and Malaya in 1967 and it is here where he became acquainted with tropical fauna and flora for the first time.

[5] A consistent education was difficult owing to numerous family moves and after some unhappy boarding school placements he became a pupil at Shotton Hall in Shropshire in 1973 where he began to flourish intellectually.

During his post-graduate and post-doctoral period, he travelled extensively through the rainforests of the Old and New World, including several years' experience in West Africa and Central America.

[11] Beath was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome at the age of four in 1964, thanks to the persistence of his mother who knew he wasn't simply "retarded" (as it was expressed in the language of the day).