John Christopher Willis FRS (20 February 1868 - 21 March 1958) was an English botanist.

Born in Liverpool, he was educated at University College, Liverpool and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. In 1896 he was appointed director of the Royal Botanic Gardens

Botanical Garden of Peradeniya

Royal Botanical Garden, Peradeniya is located close to the city of Kandy in the Central Province of Sri Lanka. It is renowned for its collection of a variety of orchids. It includes more than 300 varieties of orchids, spices, medicinal plants and palm trees. Attached to it is the National...

, Peradeniya

Peradeniya

Peradeniya is a town of about 50,000 inhabitants on the outskirts of Kandy in Sri Lanka. It is situated on the A1 main road connecting Kandy and Colombo, just a few kilometres west of Kandy....

, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

) until 1912 when he was appointed director of the botanic gardens at Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...

. He was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1897, and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1919. He returned to Cambridge in 1915, and later went to live in Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

. In 1958 he died and was posthumously awarded the Darwin-Wallace Medal

Darwin-Wallace Medal

The Darwin–Wallace Medal is a medal awarded by the Linnean Society of London for "major advances in evolutionary biology". Historically, the medals have been awarded every 50 years, beginning in 1908...

 by the Linnean Society.