Larry Noblick was born in Ohio and has a B.S. in Biological Conservation (Wildlife Management), a B.S. in Education, and an M.S. in Botany from Ohio State University. He first became interested in palms while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Brazil (1978-80). He founded an herbarium at the Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana (HUEFS) in Bahia, Brazil, and later returned and spent four more years developing it and continuing his studies on the palms of the Atlantic Forest Region. He came back to the U.S. in 1986 and obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1991. He then went on to complete a post-doc at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, Miami, Florida and has worked at Montgomery Botanical Center, Miami, Florida since 1994 as their palm specialist, collections manager, and palm biologist. He has been a member of the IPS since 1987. In 2004, he was nominated as a director and became the administrative secretary in 2006.