Herbert Kenneth Airy Shaw  Herbert Kenneth Airy Shaw (7 April 1902 – 1985) was a notable English botanist and classicist. Airy Shaw was born at The Mount, Grange Road, Woodbridge, Suffolk to a father serving as Second Master at the Woodbridge Grammar School and a mother descended from George Biddell Airy, Astronomer Royal (1835-1881). In 1921 he entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, to read classics, but he switched to natural sciences, taking his degree in 1924 and finishing in 1925, then taking a position at Kew Gardens. He became an expert on tropical Asian botany and on entomology.