Richard Corlett did his Bachelor's degree at the University of Cambridge, and his PhD at the Australian National University, with fieldwork in Papua New Guinea. He has taught at Chiang Mai University (1980-82), National University of Singapore (1982-87 and 2008-2012), and University of Hong Kong (1988-2008). Since 2012, he has been head of the Center for Integrative Conservation at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in southwest
Yunnan. In addition to numerous scientific papers, he has written and co-authored several books, including Tropical Rain Forests: an Ecological and Biogeographical Comparison and The Ecology and Biodiversity of Hong Kong. He was also co-editor of Singapore Biodiversity: An Encyclopedia of the
Natural Environment and The Routledge Handbook of Forest Ecology. He is chief editor of the journal Global Ecology and Conservation. He received the China Friendship Award in 2016.