Hugh Shaw MacKee

Hugh Shaw MacKee previously known as Hugh Shaw McKee (1912 – 1995) was a botanist[3] who was born in Northern Ireland, but who collected in Australia and Oceania, and finally in New Caledonia, where together with his wife and other collaborators, he collected over 46,000 specimens.

[4] Hugh Shaw McKee (later Hugh Shaw MacKee) earned a Bachelor of Botany in 1935 from the University of Belfast, and his doctorate in Plant Physiology in 1938 from Oxford University.

[2][1] From 1935 to 1938 he worked in London for the South African Co-operative Deciduous Fruit Exchange.

From 1954 to 1956 he was seconded to the South Pacific Commission[1][6] with headquarters in Noumea, from where he made many collecting expeditions (Samoa, Fiji, the Solomon Islands and New Guinea.

[6] In 1964 he was recruited by the CNRS to work in New Caledonia, where he remained for the rest of his life, collecting and working,[1] and it was there he changed his name from McKee to MacKee to make it easier for French speakers to know how to say his name.