WOMEN INSPIRED BY MARSHALL WARD

Harry Marshall Ward inevitably influenced all the women, and men, who passed through his department.  Highlighted here are the five women for whom there is the strongest evidence of his influence. That is because they were the women who, to greater of lesser extent, were involved with mycology and plant diseases, Marshall Ward’s own areas of specialism.  They are Elizabeth Dale, Maria Dawson, Charlotte Gibson, Dorothea Marryat, and Gabrielle Matthaei.  He inspired their work; he was their mentor in subject matter and in methodology.

Among his many forms of assistance, he helped them publish their first research findings, often in the Annals of Botany, of which he was a founding editor, and sometimes in the journals (Proceedings or Philosophical Transactions) of the Royal Society, of which he was a Fellow.

In spite of the peculiar difficulties women faced in lecture rooms, laboratories, and libraries (as described in 'A Woman's Experience in Marshall Ward's Cambridge'), a steady stream passed through, or had connections with, Cambridge’s Botany Department during his professorship, 1895-1906.   Among those undergraduates was Agnes Robertson (Mrs Arber) who was the first female botanist to be made a Fellow of the Royal Society.   Another woman of particular significance, although she graduated (in 1888) before Marshall Ward's professorship, was Elizabeth 'Becky' Saunders.  Through her college, Newnham, and more particularly in her role as Director of the Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women, she was both a model for and a mentor to numerous young female botanists.  It was Becky Saunders who proved the lynch pin for William Bateson’s female team of pioneering geneticists.

Now read more about Elizabeth Dale, Maria Dawson, Charlotte Gibson, Dorothea Marryat, or Gabrielle Matthaei.  Included alongside these five are three other women who passed through Marshall Ward's Botany School before becoming involved in post-graduate research but for whom, undergraduate teaching apart, his influence was indirect.  They are Sibille Ford, Gladys Sykes, and Muriel Wheldale.