Dr Barbara Briggs is one of Australia’s leading botanists and police used her skills in the 60’s to assist a kidnapping-murder case. But over the course of her 59 years of research at the Garden, she’s been part of an even bigger investigation: EVOLUTION.
Listen to the latest episode of Branch Out featuring one of our longest serving scientists as she reflects on how the advent of DNA technology created a golden age of new understanding in biology. Barbara has described and reclassified about 80 species and conducted ground-breaking research into botanical evolutionary relationships. She helped introduce DNA research to the Gardens' science programs and was made a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours for significant service to science and research as a botanist. You’ll also hear from the next generation of scientists who were at our Science Week event on 11 August 2018. Macquarie University students taught children as young as five how to extract DNA from a banana!
Dr Barbara Briggs performing research inside the National Herbarium of NSW in 1972.
Dr Barbara Briggs performing research inside the National Herbarium of NSW in about 1964.
Dr Barbara Briggs collecting specimens of the Feldmark Buttercup (Ranunculus acrophilus), a species she named, at Mount Kosciuszko.
Dr Barbara Briggs at Mount Kosciuszko in 2015.
Dr Barbara Briggs at Cradle Mountain 2018.