Winifred Elsie Brenchley OBE, DSc (Lond), FLS, FRES (1883–1953), an agricultural botanist who worked at the Rothamsted Research Station. Along with Katherine Warington, she demonstrated the role of boron as an essential micronutrient for plants. She was the first woman in the UK to break into the male-dominated sphere of agricultural science. [1] She has been described as "perhaps Britain's leading authority on weeds in the early twentieth century". [2]
Winifred Brenchley was born in London on 10, August, 1883 to Elizabeth Beckett and William Brenchley, a schoolmaster who was once the Mayor of Camberwell. Measles in childhood left her partially deaf. She was educated at James Allen's Girls' School in Dulwich, where one of her teachers was the well-known botanist Dr Lilian Clarke. [3]
She attended Swanley Horticultural College for two years, completing her course in 1903. At the school, the new science-based study provided an alternative to the earlier emphasis on practical apprenticeship training, thus opening up male-dominated horticultural trades to women. By 1903 the college was only taking women students, to provide suitable occupations for unmarried women. (There was also a growing demand for horticulturalists and agriculturalists in the British colonies and it was felt that women were suited to this role.) Brenchley won the Royal Horticultural Society Silver Gilt medal but gave up gardening to study botany. [4] She received her BSc from University College London in 1905, where she studied under Francis Wall Oliver. She was awarded a Gilchrist Scholarship for postgraduate study for 1906-7 and was awarded a DSc from the University of London in 1911 for her thesis: On the strength and development of the grain of wheat (Triticum vulgare). [5] She became a Fellow of University College in 1914.
The Gilchrist Scholarship took her to Rothamsted Experimental Station in Harpenden. She was the first woman to work there in the 60 years of the laboratories' existence, and it was admitted that she was appointed 'because the funds available would not have attracted a suitable man'. [6] At Rothamsted, where she was the only woman, a tradition of afternoon tea was established as it was considered appropriate for her by the rest of the male staff. It was this afternoon tea and a later woman scientist, Muriel Bristol, that inspired the famous work of R.A. Fisher, Lady tasting tea , on applying permutations in experiments. [7] The quality of her work was soon apparent and after a year she became a permanent employee as head of the Botany Department, a post she held until her retirement at 65. [8]
Early on at Rothamsted, she demonstrated her technical skills, improving the technique for growing plants in water culture and coming close to discovering the essential role of copper and zinc in plant nutrition, as detailed in her book Inorganic Plant Poisons and Simulants (1914, revised 1927). Katherine Warington's discovery of boron's role as a micronutrient in 1923 [9] [10] and the subsequent investigations into the effects of boron is perhaps the best-known work from her laboratory. [11] Her other chief interest was in the ecology of weeds and Weeds of Farmland (1920) she produced the first comprehensive scientific study of weeds in the UK. Her work on the permanent Park Grass plots at Rothamsted resulted in another book Manuring of Grass Land for Hay (1924) describing how lime and fertilizers affect the botanical composition of grasslands.
Brenchley was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1910. In 1920, she became a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society. She was closely associated with A D Imms with whom she collected in the field. Her main entomological interest was in the Lepidoptera. [12] She was awarded the OBE in 1948, the year she retired.
In retirement, Brenchley returned to her gardening. She was also bringing together vast quantities of unpublished material in her research notebooks, but she suffered a severe stroke and died in Harpenden on 27, October, 1953.
Rothamsted Research, previously known as the Rothamsted Experimental Station and then the Institute of Arable Crops Research, is one of the oldest agricultural research institutions in the world, having been founded in 1843. It is located at Harpenden in the English county of Hertfordshire and is a registered charity under English law.
The John Innes Centre (JIC), located in Norwich, Norfolk, England, is an independent centre for research and training in plant and microbial science founded in 1910. It is a registered charity grant-aided by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the European Research Council (ERC) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and is a member of the Norwich Research Park. In 2017, the John Innes Centre was awarded a gold Athena SWAN Charter award for equality in the workplace.
Long Ashton Research Station (LARS) was an agricultural and horticultural government-funded research centre located in the village of Long Ashton near Bristol, UK. It was created in 1903 to study and improve the West Country cider industry and became part of the University of Bristol in 1912. Later, it expanded into fruit research and in the 1980s was redirected to work on arable crops and aspects of botany. It closed in 2003.
Lilian Suzette Gibbs (1870–1925) was a British botanist who worked for the British Museum in London and an authority on mountain ecosystems.
Frances Mary Perry MBE VMH was an English gardener, administrator, writer and broadcaster.
Lilian Clarke was a botany teacher at James Allen's Girls' School in Dulwich, South London from 1896 to 1926, where she developed botanical gardens, which became known as 'The Botany Gardens'.
Winifred Mary Curtis was a British-born Australian botanist, author and a pioneer researcher in plant embryology and cytology who played a prominent role in the department of botany at the University of Tasmania (UTAS), where the main plant science laboratory is named in her honour.
Elsie Maud Wakefield, OBE was an English mycologist and plant pathologist.
Norah Lillian Penston was a British botanist and academic administrator. She was principal of Bedford College, University of London, from 1951 to 1964.
Lucy Beatrice Moore was a New Zealand botanist and ecologist.
Prof Helen Kemp Porter later Mrs Huggett FRS FRSE was a British botanist from Imperial College London. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society and the first female professor at Imperial College London. Her studies of polysaccharide metabolism in tobacco plants were groundbreaking; she was one of the first British scientists to use the innovative technologies of chromatography and radioactive tracers.
Katherine Warington was a botanist and the first person to show that boron, as boric acid, was essential for the healthy growth of plants.
Mary Dilys Glynne was a British plant pathologist and mountaineer.
Frances Joan Harvey Moore, OBE was a British plant pathologist, science administrator and conservationist.
Frances Mary Gore Micklethwait was an English research chemist, among the first to study and seek an antidote to mustard gas during the First World War. She received an MBE for her top secret wartime work in chemical warfare, which has since come to light.
Catherine Cassels Steele was a Scottish scientist who is best known for her expertise in plant biochemistry. She wrote An Introduction to Plant Biochemistry.
Swanley Horticultural College, founded in 1889, was a college of horticulture in Hextable, Kent, England. It originally took only male students but by 1894 the majority of students were female and it became a women-only institution in 1903.
Guðbjörg Inga Aradóttir FRES is an Icelandic entomologist and researcher at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) in the UK. Her work identifies novel crop protection solutions against insect agricultural pests and the diseases they transmit. She is particularly known for her research on plant resistance to cereal aphids and the Barley Yellow Dwarf Virus
Alice Hutchins was one of the two first women gardeners hired at Kew Gardens in 1896.
George Herbert Pethybridge was a British mycologist and phytopathologist, who gained an international reputation for his research on diseases of the potato species Solanum tuberosum. He is noteworthy for his 1913 discovery of the water mold species Phytophthora erythroseptica.
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