Dutch botanist who spent many years in Indonesia, where he specialised in hepatics. Willem Meijer was born in the Hague and received his PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 1951. In the same year he was appointed as an assistant at the Bogor herbarium in Java, where he remained until 1954. After a break in Europe he resumed work in Indonesia, joining the Faculty of Agriculture at Pajakumbah, Sumatra. He was appointed professor there in 1956, continuing his research on hepatics, mosses, flowering plants and tropical forest botany. Meijer moved back to the Netherlands two years later, but before long he was in the East Indies once more working at the Forest Department of North Borneo from 1959, stationed at Sandakan. He travelled around the world in 1962-1963, collecting plants and visiting herbaria, then returned to carry out more collecting in Borneo in 1963-1964, accompanied by Hermann Sleumer and Harold E. Moore. Meijer finally settled in the United States in 1968 following a visiting professorship at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. He remained there for the rest of his life. Among Meijer's published works are a botanical guide to Mt. Kinabalu (1963) and several papers on Dipterocarpaceae and orchids of Borneo. He later produced many works on the flora of Kentucky, including a tree flora and a major work on Kentucky Asteraceae (both published 1972).

Sources:
C. Baskin, 2004, "Professor Willem Meijer", Journal of the Kentucky Academy of Science, 65(1): 52-53
M.J. van Steenis Kruseman, "Cyclopedia of Collectors", Flora Malesiana, online edn:
http://www.nationaalherbarium.nl/FMCollectors/M/MeijerW.htm, accessed 26 November 2010
K.M. Wong, 2004, "Meijer of Sandakan: a tribute to Willem Meijer, 1923-2003", Sandakania, 15: 1-24.