Geoffrey Howorth Spencer Wood (1927-1957) was educated at Aymestrey School nr. Worcester, at Clayesmore, and at Keble College, Oxford, where he read Botany, graduating in 1948. After winning the Colonial Probationership for Forestry and studying forestry for a year, he proceeded on his first tour of Uganda, then returned to Oxford to take the Final Honour School of Forestry, in which he gained first class honours in 1952.

He returned to Uganda, was appointed District Forestry Officer for Busoga Province, then transferred to the Colonial Research Service as a Senior Scientific Officer and was sent to North Borneo as Forest Botanist, 1954, stopping midway to undertake a few months' study at the Forest Research Institute, Kepong, Malaya. In North Borneo his work included special investigations into species of Dipterocarpaceae; his collected specimens in this field were later housed in many herbaria, including at Kepong, Kew, Leiden and Oxford. He died in 1957 as a result of burns received in an accident at his camp while on a collecting tour in Brunei.