Recently, the Royal Society of Edinburgh announced the list of new academicians for 2024, with a total of 57 scientists elected as academicians, including 2 honorary academicians and 6 foreign (communication) academicians. Li Dezhu, a researcher of the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, was elected as a foreign academician of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for his contributions to plant biodiversity science.

Li Dezhu has been engaged in research on plant classification, systematics, biogeography, and biodiversity conservation for a long time. He led his team to build the largest wildlife germplasm resource facility in Asia, and was the first to use large-scale DNA barcodes and shallow genome sequencing data to study the diversity of plant species in China. He constructed a complete life tree at the family level of flowering plants worldwide, and for the first time proposed the "Jurassic gap" in the origin of angiosperms.

The Royal Society of Edinburgh, founded in 1783, is an independent, non political educational academic organization that represents one of the top five academic institutions in the UK, with over 1800 academicians.