Ronald Carl Phillips (1932–2005) was an American marine botanist[1] and educator in the United States, Netherlands and Ukraine.

[10] Ron was born in 1932 to father Claude Phillips, a former geography teacher, and mother Cleo Belle (née Felts) in Carbondale, Illinois.

In addition to Phillips’s teaching career, he worked during the summers at Friday Harbor Laboratory, San Juan Islands near Seattle, Washington.

In 1959 he worked for Bob Ingle, the Director of the Florida State Board of Conservation Marine Lab, on projects involving the first recorded experimental seagrass transplants in order to restore habitats at dredged sites.

[16] His scientific travels took him to 35 countries (Netherlands, France, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China and Taiwan, Philippines, United Kingdom, Israel and Egypt, the Soviet Union, Palau) and many places around South America and the Persian Gulf.