Australian forester and surveyor. Fitzgerald collected plants in Tasmania, Western Australia and New Guinea. William Fitzgerald was born in Mangana, Tasmania, where he learned about surveying and forestry. He corresponded with Ferdinand Mueller in the early 1890s and in 1903 was appointed to the Western Australian Royal Commission on Forests. From 1904 he chaired the State Forests Advisory Board. He became a member of the Kimberley Trigonometry Survey in 1905 and at this time made his most important collecting expeditions in Western Australia. He published his results in two works, in all describing five new genera and more than 200 species from Western Australia. His major work, The Botany of the Kimberleys, appeared in 1918. Fitzgerald died on the Daru River in Papua New Guinea while exploring the Bismarck Ranges on 6 August 1929. The species Brachychiton fitzgeraldianus Guymer (Sterculiaceae) is named in his honour.

Sources:
Anon., 1929, Journal of Botany, 67: 309
J.H. Barnhart, 1965, Biographical Notes Upon Botanists, 1: 547
P. Short, 1993, "William V. Fitzgerald - miscellaneous notes on his N.W. Australian collections, publications and manuscripts", Australian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter, 75: 1-6.