The editor of these letters is, like his subject, a "compleat naturalist." Weber has been an ornithologist, botanist, amateur actor, tenor, recorder player, reader to seniors, explorer, and especially interested in Colorado’s plants and their discoverers. For a short time, he and Cockerell were colleagues.
Born in New York in 1918, Weber is familiar with most parts of North America. He has written monographs of the lichens and mosses of the Galapagos Islands. He is widely traveled in Europe, Russia, Siberia, Australia, and South America. His vita includes over twenty books and 200 scientific papers. Twenty-six plant species have been named after him.
His biographical subjects have included Wilhelm N. Suksdorf, botanist of Washington State; C. C. Parry, a nineteenth century botanist from Iowa who collected plants in Colorado and Mexico; and Áskell and Doris Löve, world-famous plant taxonomists. He has published Cockerell’s bibliography and The American Cockerell: A Naturalist’s Life.
Weber is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London