Other illustrators of this period that he wrote about included William Hooker. Awards William Stearn received three honorary doctorates during his lifetime, from Leiden (D.Sc.1960), Cambridge (Sc.D.1967), and Uppsala (Fil.Dr.1972). He was the Masters Memorial Lecturer, Royal Horticultural Society in 1964. In 1976 the Linnean Society awarded him their Gold Medal for his contributions to Linnean scholarship and taxonomic botany. In 1985 he was the Wilkins Lecturer of the Royal Society, entitled Wilkins, John Ray, and Carl Linnaeus. In 1986 he received the Founder's Medal of the Society for the History of Natural History and in 1993 he received the Engler Gold Medal from the International Association for Plant Taxonomy. The Royal Horticultural Society awarded him both their Veitch Memorial Medal (1964) and Victoria Medal of Honour (VMH, 1965). In 2000 he received the Asa Gray Award, the highest honour of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists. Stearn was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1997 Birthday Honours for services to horticulture and botany. He was well regarded in Sweden for his studies on Linnaeus, and possessed a good grasp of the language. In addition to his honorary doctorate from Uppsala, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded him their Linnaeus Medal in 1972, he was granted the title of Commander of the Swedish Order of the Star of the North (Polar Star) in 1980 and admitted to membership of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1983. Stearn was also elected to membership of the Swedish Linnaeus Society. Legacy Stearn is considered a preeminent British botanist, and was once likened to botanical scholars such as Robert Brown, Darwin, the Hookers (William and Joseph) and Frans Stafleu. He has been variously described as a Renaissance man, a polymath, "the modern Linnaeus", "the great Linnaean scholar of our day", "one of the world's greatest botanists" and a giant among botanists and horticulturalists. On his death, The Times noted his encyclopedic grasp of his field, stating that he was "acknowledged as the greatest botanical authority of the twentieth century". One description that Stearn rejected, however, was "the complete naturalist"an allusion to the title of his biography of Linnaeus. His contribution to his field was far greater than his extensive bibliography suggests, since he was known for his input into many of his colleagues' work, leading Professor P. B. Tomlinson to observe "he left no tome