Robert Francis Ross McNabb

Robert Francis Ross McNabb was a New Zealand mycologist. He was born in Kawakawa, and attended local schools in his youth, including Whangarei Boys' High School and Southland Boys' High School. He received a BSc degree from the University of Otago in 1956, and two years later an MSc for his work on mycorrhizae morphology in native New Zealand plants. In 1961, having been awarded a National Research Fellowship the year before, McNabb left New Zealand for the UK to study with Cecil Terence Ingold at Birkbeck College. McNabb earned a PhD in 1963; his thesis was titled "Taxonomic studies in the Dacrymycetaceae". He was jointly awarded the Hamilton Memorial Prize in 1966 from The Royal Society of New Zealand, the same year he was appointed to the editorial board of the New Zealand Journal of Botany. Most of McNabb's later publications, largely published in this journal, were about fungal taxonomy. Fungus species named in honor of McNabb include Paxillus mcnabbii, and Entoloma mcnabbianum.