DOROTHEA MARRYAT

Dorothea Marryat, like Charlotte Gibson, did not in the long run pursue a career in plant pathology though, in her case, that may have been because of Harry Marshall Ward’s early death in 1906.  After her paper on the responses of wheat varieties to yellow rust (1907), she published the following year a paper on a wood decaying fungus, Pleurotus subpalmatus, in which she employed Marshall Ward's methods (Marryat, 1908).  The influence of Marshall Ward seems to have been kept alive for Marryat by one of Ward's students, Rowland Biffen - just as it was for Elizabeth Dale.

Thereafter, Dorothea was not lost to the natural sciences but was drawn into the group of female geneticists who assisted William Bateson.  She was a student at Newnham College (1901-1905) - where she was a contemporary and friend of Agnes Robertson - but for some unknown reason she never sat the final Tripos examinations, remaining in Cambridge until 1911 when she married the zoologist, JJ Lister. Her friendship with Agnes Roberston continued long after Cambridge, Agnes and her daughter, Muriel, spending happy summer holidays with ‘Aunt Dolly’ at the Lister family home in Lyme Regis.

Agnes Robertson (Mrs Arber) is not included among these biographies; in part because, in spite of her being the first female botanist to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (1946), Cambridge was for her an interlude between a first degree from the University of London and post-graduate research in London and several other places.  And, in part, because much of her life was covered in Ayres, 2020. 

References (for Gibson and Marryat)

Ayres, PG. 2020.  Women and the Natural Sciences in Edwardian Britain.  In Search of Fellowship.  Palgrave MacMillan: London.

Gibson, Charlotte M. 1904. Notes on infection experiments with various Uredineae.  New Phytologist, 3, 184-191.

Gibson, Charlotte M. 1908. The morphology and systematic position of Scytothamnus australis. Journal of Botany, 46, 137-41.

Davey AJ & Gibson, Charlotte M. 1917. New Phytologist, 16, 147.

Gibson, Charlotte M. 1932. Seeds and tubercles of Ficaria verna. Journal of Botany, LXX, 239.

Marryat, Dorothea C.E. 1907. Notes of the infection and histology of two wheats immune to the attacks of Puccinia glumarum, yellow rust. Journal of Agricultural Science, 2, 129-138.

Marryat, Dorothea C.E. 1908.  Chlamydospore-formation in the basidiomycete Pleurotus subpalmatus. New Phytologist, 7, 17-22.

Mur, LAJ, Kenton, P, Lloyd, Amanda J, Ougham, Helen, and Prats, Elena. 2008. The hypersensitive response: the centenary is upon us but how much do we know? Journal of Experimental Botany, 59, 501-520.

Ward, HM. 1902a. On the relations between host and parasite in the bromes (Bromus) and their brown rust. Annals of Botany, 1, 233-315.

Ward, HM. 1905. Recent researches on the parasitism of fungi. Annals of Botany, 19, 1-54.

Next read Gabrielle Matthaei or return to Women Inspired by Marshall Ward