Roberta Ann Townsend (born 1954) is an Australian botanist, phycologist and archivist. She is also known as a plant collector under the name Roberta Ann Cowan.

Life

Townsend was born in 1954 in Melbourne, Victoria. She completed a BSc (hons) in 1976 at the University of Melbourne. She later graduated from the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD) is a public university, public research university in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in both Australia and Oceania. One of Australia's six sandstone universities, it was one of the ...

in with a PhD for her thesis "The ''

Sporolithaceae The Sporolithaceae is the only known family of algae in the Sporolithales order.Kamiya, M., Lindstrom, S.C., Nakayama, T., Yokoyama, A., Lin, S.-M., Guiry, M.D., Gurgel, F.D.G., Huisman, J.M., Kitayama, T., Suzuki, M., Cho, T.O. & Frey, W. (2017). ...

'' : its place in the Florideophycidae" in 1995. In 1994 Townsend's interest in researching algae led her to edit the Australian Marine Algal Name Index. She married American botanist

Richard Sumner Cowan Richard Sumner Cowan (January 23, 1921 – November 17, 1997) was an American botany, botanist. Early life Richard Sumner Cowan was born on January 23, 1921, in Crawfordsville, Indiana. His family moved to Florida and he was educated in the Tam ...

in 1986. Together they collected many plant species. During 2002 and 2003 she served as the Australian Botanical Liaison Officer at the Royal Botanic Gardens in London, England. Townsend is working at the

Western Australian Herbarium The Western Australian Herbarium is the state Herbarium, situated in Perth, the capital of Western Australia. It houses a collection of more than 845,000 dried specimens of plants, algae, bryophytes (mosses, liverworts and hornworts), lichens, fu ...

coralline algae Coralline algae are red algae in the order Corallinales. They are characterized by a thallus that is hard because of calcareous deposits contained within the cell walls. The colors of these algae are most typically pink, or some other shade of re ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Townsend, Roberta Ann 1954 births Living people University of Sydney alumni Australian Botanical Liaison Officers Australian women botanists Australian phycologists