Peter Crane
British botanist and paleontologist (1954- )
Sir Peter Crane (born 18 July 1954) is the current president of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation and senior research scientist in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. In addition to his work in leading and developing educational and natural history organizations, including the Field Museum in Chicago and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, he has had a long career as a professor and researcher in both the UK and the United States. He is best known for his work on the origin and early evolution of flowering plants (angiosperms) based on studies of the plant fossil record. His popular writing includes Ginkgo: The Tree That Time Forgot, a book that traces the evolution and cultural history of Ginkgo biloba.
Personal life and education
Peter Crane was born in Kettering, Northamptonshire in the United Kingdom. He attended Kettering Grammar School where he developed a strong interest in local history and archaeology as well as plants, and the University of Reading, where he received his BSc in botany, with honours, in 1975. He received his Ph.D. in Botany from Reading in 1981, having also served on the faculty there from 1978 with his thesis, "Studies on the Flora of the Reading Beds (Upper Palaeocene)."
Crane is married with two children, a daughter and son.
Career
Peter Crane has held positions at the University of Reading (1978-1981), the Field Museum (1982-1999), the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (1999-2006), the University of Chicago (2006-2009), Yale University (2009-2016) and the Oak Spring Garden Foundation (2016–present), among others. He has also held visiting or part-time positions at universities and museums around the world. The following section discusses some of his professional accomplishments in more detail.
“Peter Crane” enters the record as british botanist and paleontologist (1954- ). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Peter, Crane and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q384238. VIAF identifies the subject as 12368823. The Library of Congress control number is n85242459. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1954, 1975, 1981 and 1978.
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This entry incorporates text from “Peter Crane” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.