Frank Round was an internationally renowned phycologist, specialising in the ecology and systematics of diatoms. He was born in 1927 and after graduating from the University of Birmingham in 1948, he carried out pioneering research into the ecology of benthic freshwater algae in the English Lake District during a PhD supervised by Dr JWG Lund.

For most of his career he was based at the University of Bristol, and built a major international collection of specimens, literature and photographic images of diatoms, which were donated to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in 2006.

Among his 170-plus published works are two major books: The Ecology of Algae (CUP, 1981) and The Diatoms: Biology and Morphology of the Genera (CUP, 1990, with RM Crawford and DG Mann). He was appointed to a personal chair in the Department of Botany in the 1970s, and in the mid-1980s was Dean of the Faculty of Science. Following his retirement he continued to pursue his research in the School for many years and was always available to offer help and advice to staff, students and visitors alike.