American botanist George Proctor was a world authority on the flora of Jamaica, where he had lived since 1949. Born in Boston, he studied for his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania after the Second World War. Reduced funding at this time led him to take up work as a herbarium assistant at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia (1946-1947). In 1948 a defining event occurred when he was appointed botanist with the Catherwood-Chaplin West Indies Expedition, which took him to Cuba, the Caymans, San Andres y Providencia and mainland Colombia. This experience, plus his early inspiration at the hands of W.R. Maxon of the Smithsonian Institution, who published the young pteridologist's articles in the American Fern Journal, decided the botanical interests that Proctor would pursue for the rest of his life in the Caribbean.

Maxon had left an unfinished book on the ferns of Jamaica and after his Caribbean expedition Proctor (known as Dick) moved to Jamaica to begin two year's work on the island's ferns (1949-1951). (Proctor's move was also influenced by his memory of shovelling snow in his native Boston one winter, where he vowed as a boy of 13 that he would live in the tropics one day.) He went on to work at the Institute of Jamaica for 29 years (1951-1980), where he was responsible for developing the herbarium and served as head of the Natural History Division. After this he became herbarium supervisor at the National Botanic Garden in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (1982-1983) and from 1983-1998 was employed in Puerto Rico as a biologist and director of the herbarium at the government's Department of Natural and Environmental Resources, San Juan. He is now a consultant botanist at the University of the West Indies (Jamaica).

One of the four leaders in the field of Caribbean taxonomy, along with Enrique Liogier, Richard B. Howard and C. Dennis Adams, Proctor has studied the flora of more than 50 Caribbean islands and collected more than 55,000 specimens from the West Indies and Central and South America. He has also studied the historical Jamaican collections of Hans Sloane and Olof Swartz, held in Europe. Among his publications are the Flora of Barbados (1958), co-authored with E.G.B. Gooding and A.R. Loveless, Flowering Plants of Jamaica (1972), co-authored with C.D. Adams and R.W. Read, the Flora of the Cayman Islands (1984), Ferns of Jamaica (1985) and Ferns of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands (1989). In the 1990s he also prepared a treatment of the monocotyledons of Puerto Rico.

Nearly 30 plants are named after Proctor, including the national tree of the Cayman Islands, Coccothrinax proctorii Read. He was awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal and the Order of Distinction in Jamaica in 1976 for his dedicated work, and in 2004 received an honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies (to add to his 1978 honorary doctorate from Florida International University).

In 2006, at the age of 86, Proctor was embroiled in a scandal when a case was brought against him alleging his involvement in a conspiracy to murder his wife and 3 other persons. He was arrested as he was boarding an aeroplane bound for the USA, and was held for a month before he was freed on bail in May 2006. After four years of court appearances and continuations, the trial finally took place in January 2010, and Proctor was convicted on four counts of conspiracy to commit murder. On February 3, 2010, he was sentenced to four years imprisonment on each count, to be served concurrently. In October 2012, he was released from prison due to ill health having served 2 years and 7 months of his sentence, and deported to United States. Proctor completed the second edition of the Flora of the Cayman Islands during his incarceration, and it was also released in October 2012. Twice married, Proctor had six children, 30 grandchildren, and 5 great grandchildren. He passed away on October 15, 2015.

Sources:
H. Campbell, 2006, "The George Proctor Saga", Jamaica Gleaner, May 9, 2006:
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20060509/news/news3.html, accessed 30 November 2009
R. DeFilipps, 1999, "George Proctor Returns to Jamaica", The Plant Press, 2(3): 6, 8
K. Robinson, 1997, Where Dwarfs Reign: a tropical rain forest in Peru: 132-133
B. Gayle, 2010, "Proctor gets four years", Jamaica Gleaner, February 3, 2010:
> http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20100203/lead/lead4.html, accessed 8 August 2012
2012, "Cayman flora revisited by Proctor" Cayman News Service, 23 November 2012:
www.caymannewsservice.com/science-and-nature/2012/10/23/cayman-flora-revisited-proctor, accessed 12 November 2012.