David J. Patterson

Who is David J. Patterson?

David Joseph Patterson is a taxonomist specializing in protozoa and the use of taxonomy in biodiversity informatics. He was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on the 19th April 1950 to Doris Mary and Samuel Patterson, with one elder brother and a sister. He was educated at Belmont Primary, Strandtown and Grosvenor High schools. He obtained his Bachelor of Science British undergraduate degree classification#First-class honours First Class at Queen's University Belfast in 1971. He obtained a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Bristol in 1976, where he was later employed. He obtained his Doctor of Science in 1990 from Queen's University. In 1993 he moved to the University of Sydney in Australia where he became Head of the School of Biological Sciences. In 2004, he moved to the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole where he helped to establish the Encyclopedia of Life project with responsibility for the informatics component, basing EOL on the model developed with the micro*scope project.