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Leonard Rodway was an English-born Australian dentist and botanist.
Rodway was born in Torquay Devon, England, the thirteenth child of Henry Barron Rodway, a dentist and inventor of the Rodway life buoy, and his wife Elizabeth, née Allin. Leonard Rodway was educated in Birmingham and in the officers' training ship, Worcester, and obtained double first-class certificates. He served for three years as a midshipman in the merchant service, but decided to follow his father into dentistry. He obtained the licentiateship of the Royal College of Surgeons, London in 1878. He then migrated to Queensland Australia, where he married Louisa Phillips on 19 May 1879 and they soon settled in Hobart, Tasmania.
Rodway was registered under the first Tasmanian Dental Act 1884. He is mainly remembered for his interest in botany. In 1896 he was appointed honorary government botanist for Tasmania, and held this position for 36 years. His work in this connexion was largely done at week-ends and during his holidays.
From 1892 to 1928 he presented scientific papers, principally to the Royal Society of Tasmania to which he was elected in 1884, and published The Tasmanian Flora, a standard reference for forty years, Some Wild Flowers of Tasmania and Tasmanian Bryophyta.
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