Peter William Ball (born 1932 in Croydon, UK) is an English-born botanist, plant collector, and plant taxonomist, specializing in caricology (the study of the genus Carex). After completing his O-Levels in 1948, Ball studied at Whitgift School, where he was taught by Cecil Thomas Prime, co-author of The Shorter British Flora (1948). In 1952 Ball matriculated at the University of Leicester, where he studied under Tom G. Tutin. Ball graduated from the University of Leicester with a B.Sc. in 1955 and a Ph.D. in 1960. While he was a graduate student, he worked with Tutin on a revision of Salicornia for the second edition of Flora of the British Isles (1962). As a graduate student, he also worked, with the support of a Leverhulme Fellowship, from 1957 to 1959 at the University of Liverpool on t