American botanist. Royce Oliver was born in Winters, Texas, and took his bachelor's degree at Arlington State College (now part of the University of Texas) and his master's at Stephen F. Austin State University. At the latter he assisted Walter H. Lewis and collected Rubiaceae in the southwestern States and Mexico. Royce completed his master's in 1962 with a thesis on Sisyrinchium cytotaxonomy and went on to teach high school biology for a while. He joined Washington State University and Missouri Botanical Garden as a research associate in 1964, working alongside his erstwhile colleague Walter Lewis, and played an important role in field trips to Panama, making collections for the Flora of Panama project. He also undertook numerous collecting trips in Mexico and the eastern U.S. Early in 1979 a permanent position opened in the botany department at the Smithsonian Institution and Oliver left for Washington, D.C. to assist Raymond Fosberg and Marie Helene Sachet. He remained there until he retired, building his reputation as a fine plant cytologist, an experienced field researcher, and a herbarium curator par excellence. In the 1990s Royce was in close contact with Dr Sy Sohmer, Director of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT) at Fort Worth, where Royce provided a gift to establish the Royce Oliver Belize Project. He died of pancreatic cancer in 1997 at his home in College Station, Texas.

Sources:
W.H. Lewis and J.W. Nowicke, 1998, "Royce L. Oliver: 1929-1997", HerbalGram, 44: 62.