Born on 21st September 1946 in Sliema, Lanfranco was educated at St. Elizabeth School, Stella Maris College, and St Michael’s College of Education. He furthered his studies at London University and graduated B.Sc. Special in botany (1973).
Lanfranco taught in primary (1968) and secondary schools (1968-1975), and at post-secondary institutions, including government sixth forms (1975-1987) and the University of Malta. He was a visiting lecturer in systematics and botany at the University of Malta since 1978, and full-time, mainly in botany and evolutionary biology, since 1988. Following retirement (2011), he continued lecturing on a part-time basis, mainly at the Institute of Earth Systems.
He is an author of many scientific reports, articles and papers in local and foreign journals; focusing most research on Maltese and Mediterranean floristics (including endemic, native and alien species, vascular plants, marine algae and fungi) and vegetational investigations of habitats, and has reported, discovered or rediscovered many species of plants for the first time in the Maltese Islands, including the first reference to the Maltese spider orchid as an endemic, later formally named Ophrys melitensis. He is the co-author of some endemic species, like the Maltese horned pondweed, Zannichellia melitensis; and was also globally recognised with the naming of the endemic Maltese Cliff Orache, Cremnophyton lanfrancoi (= Atriplex lanfrancoi), named in his honour, having been involved in its discovery and for his contribution to Maltese and Mediterranean botany.
He has also been instrumental in providing scientific information for the designation of protected flora and protected areas, through his contribution to the first lists of sites of conservation value in the Maltese Islands and rare and threatened species included in the Red Data Book for the Maltese Islands, which were both published by the precursors of ERA in the 1980s.
Edwin Lanfranco also served on the committees of several environmental NGOs dedicated to nature conservation and was president of the Natural History Society of Malta (currently, Nature Trust Malta) and is also an advisory and academic member of several local and foreign boards and committees on botanical and environmental matters and attended international conventions and conferences in several countries. He has and is assisting ERA in various work voluntarily and has also carried out and participated in various consultancies, particularly for ecological reports and monitoring exercises. Apart from Malta, he also carried out fieldwork and lectured in other countries, mainly in the Mediterranean area.
Lanfranco is currently working on a new complete flora of Malta and continues casual lecturing and supervisions of dissertations and fieldwork projects with the Institute of Earth Systems, University of Malta.
