Dr Leonard James Webb was born in Rockhampton, Queensland in 1920.   He was first employed as a technical officer in the CSIR division of plant industry in 1944 to carry out studies of native plants with possible pharmacological and insecticidal value as well as surveys of native flora in Queensland. His employment with CSIR/O enabled him to participate in the Australian Phytochemical Survey.                   The phytochemical survey was a major project carried out by the Universities of Queensland, Sydney and Melbourne as well as CSIR/O.  It began in 1940 as a war effort project to find native plants with medicinal qualities and also poisons to livestock and was carried out under the aegis of the Medical Equipment Control Committee and the National Health and Medicinal Research Council.                       Dr Webb was extensively involved in the early stages of the survey and encouraged its extension into Papua New Guinea. Whilst working with Professor D A Herbert in the botany school of the University of Queensland Dr Webb became interested in rainforest ecology.           In 1953 he joined the Rainforest Ecology Unit of CSIRO where he carried out studies into Australian rainforests. His most noted work was his Classification of Rainforests and Relations of Rainforest Communities to Habitat Factors and the Problems of Land Use. He used this scheme to classify New Guinea rainforests and researched the effects of man upon the biosphere (known as the Mab project). He became extensively involved with the World Wildlife Fund and is a foundation councillor of the Australian Conservation Foundation.      He retired in 1980 to Griffith University, Queensland as an Honorary Professorial Fellow and has remained involved with rainforest and ecology projects.                                                     In 1983 Dr Webb was awarded the Gold Medal of the Ecological Society of Australia for his sustained investigations of the types of Australian rainforests, their distributions and relations to environmental factors, and for his leadership in raising public awareness of rainforests.                                             In 1985 Dr Webb won the inaugral BHP award for the Pursuit of Excellence in the field of the environment and in 1987 he was listed in the Queen's Birthday Honours for service to conservation, particularly in the field of rainforest ecology.                      Dr Webb has also been active internationally and through the United Nations developed co-operation with other tropical countries. He has been a member of international committees, including that for UNESCO's man and biosphere programme.