Jan de Koning is a botanist, having received his university training in (tropical) horticulture at Wageningen University in The Netherlands. In 1983 he obtained his Ph.D. degree with a dissertation in French on the constitution and conservation of a national park in Cote d'Ivoire: 'La foret du Banco, la flore, la vegetation'. After several years of work in Cote d"ivoire, de Koning went to work as a botanist and head of the Botany section at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique, where he stayed from 1978-89. In the following two years he directed the Netherlands Botanic Garden Foundation and became Prefect (Director) of the Hortus Botanicus of University Leiden in 1991. Jan de Koning published about 16th century botany as well as on cultivated trees and shrubs. He is actually member of the Dutch Scientific Authority of CITES and represents Europe in CITES' Plants Committee. He is now 58, has three sons, and lives near Leiden.