Professor Thomas Maxwell Harris FRS[1] (8 January 1903 – 1 May 1983)[2] was an English paleobotanist.
He was educated at Bootham School, York,[3] Wyggeston School, Leicester, and University College, Nottingham, before continuing to complete his doctorate at Christ's College, Cambridge.[2]
Tom Harris was a Palaeobotanist on East Greenland Geological Survey, 1926-27.[4] He became a professor at the University of Reading in 1934,[5] working in the botany department with Theodora Lisle Prankerd and Terrance Ingold.[1] He was Head of the Department of Botany.[6] At Reading he supervised William Chaloner and Winifred Pennington, both later professors of botany.[6] The Harris Garden, located on the University of Reading's Whiteknights Campus, was named after him.[7]
Harris was a Fellow of the Royal Society.[1] He served as president of the Linnean Society of London from 1961 to 1964.