John Veron

A sculpture of John 'Charlie' Veron, 'The Godfather of Coral' was created by Jason deCaires Taylor for the Museum of Underwater Art as part of the Ocean Sentinels above the surface exhibition in 2022

He was featured in the 2017 documentary Chasing Coral.

In 2009, Sir David Attenborough introduced Veron's lecture to the Royal Society.

Since 2008 he together with colleagues have been producing an open access website about coral taxonomy, biogeography and identification, Corals of The World (www.coralsoftheworld.org). The website includes a mapping program called Coral Geographic and an identification program called CoralID. He has campaigned extensively on climate change, mass bleaching of coral reefs, ocean acidification and related environmental issues.

After taking his PhD in 1971, Veron was offered a postdoctoral position at James Cook University to study corals. Veron was the first full-time researcher on the Great Barrier Reef (1972) and the first scientist employed by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (1974). He participated in 67 expeditions to all the major reef provinces in the world. He credited "Red" Gilmartin and John W. Wells from Cornell University as key figures in clarifying his interest in taxonomy in the 1970s.

John Veron OAM (born 1945), complete name John Edward Norwood Veron, credited in research as J. E. N. Veron, and in other writing as Charlie Veron, is a biologist, taxonomist, and specialist in the study of corals and reefs. He is believed to have discovered more than 20% of the world's coral species.

John Edward Norwood Veron (known as "Charlie" due to his interest in the natural sciences at school) was born in 1945 in Sydney. He attended Barker College in Sydney. He won a Commonwealth scholarship as a gifted child and went on study at the University of New England. His main interests were in the natural world, especially marine life. He participated in the scuba club while at university.