I. B. (Illtyd Buller) Pole Evans

Born in Llanmaes, Wales, on 3 September 1879, he became a Welsh-born South African botanist, mycologist, and plant pathologist whose career was closely tied to the development of scientific botany in southern Africa. Sources agree that he studied in South Wales and later at Cambridge, before building his scientific career in South Africa.

He is especially remembered for leading early work in mycology and plant pathology and for helping organize botanical research on a national scale. South African sources also credit him with heading the newly formed Division of Mycology and Plant Pathology in 1912, and later with playing an important role in botanical survey work across the country.

Pole-Evans also wrote and collected widely, and his botanical author abbreviation, Pole-Evans, appears on the scientific names of many plants he described. He died on 16 October 1968, and later accounts remembered him as a pioneer of botanical research in South Africa.