Gayther Plummer was a professor of botany at the University of Georgia and served as the State Climatologist for Georgia. A native of Indiana, Plummer served in the United States Army Air Corps during the Second World War and worked at the Indiana Department of Conservation among other places before coming to Athens in 1955. He retired in 1994.
Plummer also participated in the development of the Georgia Heritage Trust, part of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, during the 1970s. During his career, he was awarded with a research fellowship at the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies and was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.