George joined the
Western Australian Herbarium as a laboratory assistant at the age of 20 in 1959. He worked under
Charles Gardner for a year before the latter's retirement, and partly credits him with rekindling an interest in banksias. In 1963 he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Western Australia, and the following year added a botany
major. Continuing at the Western Australian Herbarium as a botanist, in 1968 he was seconded as
Australian Botanical Liaison Officer at the
Royal Botanic Gardens in London. George also has an interest in history, especially historical biography of naturalists in Western Australia. He has published a number of articles in the field of history, including a history of the
Royal Society of Western Australia and a tribute to naturalist and historian
Rica Erickson. In 1999 he published a book on
William Dampier's naturalist collections in Western Australia entitled ''William Dampier in New Holland: Australia's First Natural Historian''. George initially specialised in orchids, but his focus gradually moved to the
Proteaceae genera
Banksia and
Dryandra and later
Synaphea. He contributed the text to
Celia Rosser's three volume
The Banksias, published between 1981 and 2001, which contains Rosser's paintings of every
Banksia species. In 1981
Nuytsia published his landmark monograph "
The genus Banksia L.f. (Proteaceae)", the first systematic treatment of the taxonomy of
Banksia since
George Bentham's
Flora Australiensis appeared in the 1870s. Three years later he published the popular
The Banksia Book, and the following year he published
An Introduction to the Proteaceae of Western Australia. In 1999, his taxonomy of the
Banksia and
Dryandra genera was published as part of the
Flora of Australia series of monographs. From 1981 to 1993, George lived in
Canberra and worked as Executive Editor for the
Flora of Australia series. His extensive revision of the genus
Verticordia, an arrangement which included new taxa, was published in
Nuytsia in 1991. He is now living in
Perth again, and works as a botanical and editorial consultant. He is also an Honorary Research Associate with the Western Australian Herbarium, and an Adjunct Associate Professor with the College of Science,
Murdoch University. ==Honours==