Loutfy Boulos is Emeritus Professor in the Botany Department of the University of Alexandria, Egypt. He is an authority on the plant diversity and economic botany in the arid regions of the Middle East and North Africa.

Boulos was born in Qena, Egypt, and earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry and botany at Cairo University in 1954. He went on to obtain an MSc in botany at Cairo in 1961 and his doctorate at the University of Montpellier in 1963.

Boulos worked at the National Research Centre and Desert Institute (now the Desert Research Centre) in Cairo from 1960-1966, where he was head of plant taxonomy from 1963-1966. He was then appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Libya, Tripoli, and served as Associate Professor of Botany there from 1968-1971, establishing during this time the Libyan national herbarium.

Returning to Egypt, Boulos spent two years at Associate Professor of Botany at Cairo University before moving to the University of Jordan, Amman, as Professor of Plant Taxonomy and UNESCO Expert, in 1973. He established the national herbarium of Jordan in this period. Following this appointment he worked for the International Livestock Centre of Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as a botanist in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Plant Production (1976-1978), where he established another herbarium.

From 1978-1984 Boulos was in Cairo once more, as Professor of Plant Taxonomy and Flora of Egypt at the National Research Centre, Dokki. He then settled for 12 years at Kuwait University as Professor Plant Taxonomy, thereafter working in consultancy. He was appointed Professor Emeritus at Alexandria in 2005.

Over the course of his career Boulos has worked on projects including the introduction of crops to Egypt, conservation of desert habitats in Kuwait and as co-ordinator for Southwest Asia in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Centres of Plant Diversity Project (1990-1993). He is a member of many professional groups and acts as a consultant for the Gulf of Aqaba and St Katherine Protectorates Development Programmes, and for Environmental Quality International (Cairo), through which he helped to conceive the desert park and botanical gardens at Siwa Oasis in Egypt's Western Desert.

In terms of field work, Boulos has lead and participated in numerous expeditions in Egypt, Arabia, Africa and Europe since 1952. In addition to earlier expeditions in his home country, between 1994 and 2005 Boulos carried out botanical exploration in Egypt for the Flora of Egypt project. He has described many new species and the genera Taeckholmia Boulos, Babcokia Boulos and Embergeria Boulos. Species named in his honour include Atractylis boulosii Tackholm, Crocus boulosii Greuter and Zygophyllum boulosii Hosny. He is also credited with finding living specimens of the palm tree Medemia argun in 1963 in the Nubian Desert, which was previously only known in Egypt from fruits among the offerings in ancient tombs.

Boulos has authored more than 100 papers and articles, and is credited as author or editor of 15 books, including his contributions to the Flora of Egypt (vols 1-4, 1999-2005). His publications include Common Weeds in Egypt (1967, with M.N. El-Hadid), Medicinal Plants of North Africa (1983), The Weed Flora of Egypt (1985, with M. El-Gohary, revised edition 1994, with M.N. El-Hadidi) and The Weed Flora of Kuwait (1988, with M. El-Gohary).

Boulos was a founder member of the Egyptian Botanical Society, the Association for Tropical Biology and OPTIMA, the Organization for the Phyto-Taxonomic Investigation of the Mediterranean Area. He joined the International Association for Plant Taxonomy in 1961 and the Association pour l'Etude Taxonomique de la Flore d'Afrique Tropicale (AETFAT) in 1962, and was appointed a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1974. Since 2005 he has been a Foreign Member of the Linnean Society. He is also an honorary member of the Al-Bayrunia Society, Rabat, Morocco.

Sources:
L. Boulos, Curriculum Vitae:
www.portal.alexu.edu.eg/CV_Alexu/AU_FSCI_C.V_%20Loutfy.%20Boulos.pdf , accessed 3 September 2012
2001, "Profile: Loutfy Boulos, peripatetic botanist of the Middle East", Plant Talk, 26: 7.