Richard John Pankhurst (1940[1]–2013) was a British computer scientist, botanist and academic.

From 1963 to 1966 he worked at CERN, then from 1966 to 1974 on computer-aided design at Cambridge University, and from 1974 to 1991 at the Natural History Museum as curator of the British herbarium.

In 1991, he became a Principal Scientific Officer at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

[2] He published over fifty peer reviewed papers[2] and sat on several committees:[2] His book Biological Identification (1978) has been described as " the first textbook on computer methods in identification".

[2] Pankhurst died in 2013,[3] a year after the species Taraxacum pankhurstianum, endemic to St. Kilda, was named in his honour, for his suggestion that the seed from which it was grown at Edinburgh be collected.