Professor Philip John White FLS FRSE graduated from Oxford University with a BA in Biochemistry in 1983 and was awarded a PhD in Natural Sciences (Botany) from the University of Manchester in 1987, followed by a DSc in 2016. He is currently a Research Specialist in Plant Ecophysiology at The James Hutton Institute (UK), a Full Professor at Huazhong Agricultural University (China), where he lectures on "Mineral Nutrition of Higher Plants - A Phylogenetic Approach", and a Visiting Professor at the Comenius University (Slovakia). He has published more than 270 refereed papers and over 200 other scientific articles. He was a commissioned contributor to Trends in Plant Science and BioMedNet… (2001-2003) and has served on the Editorial Boards of many periodicals including Annals of Botany, Plant and Soil, and Journal of Experimental Botany. He is listed as a Highly Cited Researcher in Plant & Animal Science by Clarivate Analytics.