After studying at
University College of Wales, Aberystwyth and the
Welsh Plant Breeding Station, Fay was awarded a PhD in 1989 for his thesis on
genetic resources in
Trifolium (
clover). He started working at Kew in 1986. In 2000, he received the
Bicentenary Medal of the Linnean Society, and has served on its governing council for several terms since 2003. He was awarded the 2022
JBS Haldane Lecture from the
Genetics Society. He is currently Co-Chair of the Orchid Specialist Group of the
Species Survival Commission of
IUCN. He served as chief editor of the
Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society from 2008 to 2023 and has served on the editorial boards for
Annals of Botany, ''
Curtis's Botanical Magazine and other journals. Fay researches conservation genetics and phylogenetics. Among many other publications, he is an author of all iterations to date of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group, and in 2017 he co-authored an encyclopedia on vascular plants entitled Plants of the World'' with
Maarten Christenhusz and
Mark Wayne Chase. ==References==