Herbert Kenneth Airy Shaw

Who was Herbert Kenneth Airy Shaw?

Herbert Kenneth Airy Shaw was a notable English botanist and classicist.

Airy Shaw was born at The Mount, Grange Road, Woodbridge, Suffolk to a father serving as Second Master at the Woodbridge Grammar School and a mother descended from George Biddell Airy, Astronomer Royal. In 1921 he entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, to read classics, but he switched to natural sciences, taking his degree in 1924 and finishing in 1925, then taking a position at Kew Gardens. He became an expert on tropical Asian botany and on entomology.