I was born in the Netherlands, finished my PhD in 1979, and was appointed Professor of Ecophysiology at Utrecht University in 1985. In 1998, I migrated to Australia, where I was appointed Professor of Plant Biology/Ecology at UWA. There, I studied mineral nutrition of Australian native species, seeking to discover how some Australian plants acquire and use phosphorus from depauperate soil. In 2006, I established the Kwongan Foundation.
I have published >600 papers, and feature on Highly Cited lists of Clarivate in Agricultural sciences and Plant and animal sciences, with an H index of 91. I was elected to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003, and the Australian Academy of Science in 2012. I received a Honorary Professorships from China Agricultural University in 2002, the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2004, the Shenyang Agricultural University in 2018, and the Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, China in 2019. I was appointed as Distinguished Professor at the National Academy of Agriculture Green Development at China Agricultural University in 2018.
I received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Society of Root Research in 2018 and the John Oldham Conservation Employee Award from the Conservation Council of WA in 2019.