Francis Wall Oliver FRS^[1] (10 May 1864 – 14 September 1951) was an English botanist.

He was educated at Bootham School, York, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took a first-class degree in natural sciences.^[1][2][3]

He was Quain Professor of Botany at University College London 1890–1925 where he supervised the PhD of Margaret Jane Benson, and then Professor of Botany at the University of Cairo 1929–1935. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1905.^[1][4] He was awarded the Linnean Medal in 1925.

He edited a book titled Makers of British Botany which contained biographies of British botanists Robert Morison, John Ray, Nehemiah Grew, Stephen Hales, John Hill, Robert Brown, William Hooker, John Stevens Henslow, John Lindley, William Griffith, Arthur Henfrey, William Henry Harvey, Miles Joseph Berkeley, Joseph Henry Gilbert, William Crawford Williamson, Harry Marshall Ward and Joseph Dalton Hooker.

In late 1935 he retired to Nanyuki, Kenya where he died in his sleep in September 1951.^{[citation needed]}