Mary Gillham

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Mary Gillham in 2012

Mary Eleanor Gillham MBE (born November 26, 1921 in Ealing , London , † March 23 or March 24, 2013 in Cardiff , Wales ) was a British naturalist , botanist , university teacher , author and conservationist .

Life

Gillham was the daughter of Charles William and Edith Gertrude Gillham. She graduated from high school at 16 and worked in a London County Council office in Westminster . From 1940 to 1945 she served in the Women's Land Army on several farms. After the Second World War , she completed an agricultural degree at the University of Wales, Alberystwyth in Wales, from which she graduated in 1949 as a Bachelor of Science with first-class awards. 1953 she was awarded the dissertation The vegetation of the South Pembrokeshire Islands in relation to the environment at the University of Wales, Bangor for Ph.D.PhD. This work is based on field studies in which she investigated the effects of seabirds on vegetation on the islands off the coast of Pembrokeshire . From August 1953 to November 1956 she was an assistant professor at the University of Exeter . In November 1956 Gillham went on an exchange program as a lecturer at Massey University in New Zealand , where she worked for a year. From March 1958 she worked for several years at the University of Melbourne in Australia .

Between 1956 and 1959, Gillham visited islands between Australia and Tasmania , studied birds on the Great Barrier Reef and spent three years researching shearwaters ( mutton birds ), which are hunted by the locals for their meat. In the winter of 1959 she took part in an Antarctic research program of the Australian Antarctic Division with three other women on the Danish icebreaker Thala Dan . In December 1959, she had a one-week study visit to Macquarie Island . From May to June 1960 she visited Cape Town , Robben Island , Meeuw Island and Schaapen Island in South Africa , in July 1960 she came to Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia , in August 1960 to Mozambique , the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ghana and in September 1960 to Nigeria . In 1961 she became a lecturer in the adult education department at Cardiff University . In 1988 she retired.

In 1970 she took a break to do research on the Aldabra Atoll in the Indian Ocean . The US military intended to build an air force base on the atoll. On behalf of the Royal Society and the Smithsonian Institution , she was asked to write a report on the island's wildlife before construction could begin. Thanks to this study, in which Gillham highlighted the importance of the atoll to bird life and the Aldabra giant tortoise , plans for the airfield were dropped. In 1982 Aldabra was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO .

Upon her return to Cardiff, Gillham continued her studies of local wildlife in South Wales and subsequently led field trips to the UK and around the world, including the Rocky Mountains , Europe, Jamaica , New England and the Seychelles .

In 1979 she took part in a US expedition on a sailing yacht to an uninhabited island in the Bahamas . Other expeditions took her to Africa and Florida . In the mid-1980s, Gillham flew to Nigeria to give a lecture on drought-related plant growth at Kano University in the southern Sahara. Her students were elderly men who wanted to learn more about plant growth in the desert. After the outbreak of war, the university was closed.

Gillham was also active in natural history organizations and in conservation organizations. She was President of the Glamorgan Naturalists 'Trust and the Cardiff Naturalists' Society . In 2008 she was named Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her conservation work in South Wales .

Between 1963 and 2007, Gillham published 21 books, including A Naturalist in New Zealand (1966) and Islands of the Trade Winds: An Indian Ocean Odyssey (2000) among her best known works.

Fonts

  • Sea-birds . (Instructions to Young Ornithologists IV). Museum Press: London, 1963
  • A naturalist in New Zealand . Museum Press: London, 1966
  • Sub-Antarctic Sanctuary: Summertime On Macquarie Island . Victor Gollancz: London, 1967
  • The Natural History of Gower . D. Brown and Sons Ltd: Cowbridge, 1977
  • (with John Perkins and Jack Evans) The Historic Taf Valleys, Volume 2: In the Brecon Beacons National Park. Geology, Social History, Natural History . Merthyr Tydfil and District Naturalists' Society. ISBN 0-90592-821-0 , 1982
  • Swansea Bay's Green Mantle. Wildlife on an Industrial Coast . D. Brown & Sons: Cowbridge. ISBN 0-90592-818-0 , 1982
  • Sand dunes . (Glamorgan Heritage Coast Wildlife Series Volume 1). Glamorgan Wildlife Trust: Bridgend, 1987
  • Rivers. (Glamorgan Heritage Coast Wildlife Series Volume 2). Glamorgan Heritage Coast Project, Southerndown. ISBN 0-95085-382-8 , 1989
  • Limestone Downs: Commons, Farms and Woods . Glamorgan Wildlife Trust: Bridgend, 1991
  • Coastal Downs: Ogmore and Dunraven, Glamorgan Heritage Coast Wildlife Series, Volume 4 . Glamorgan Wildlife Trust: Bridgend. ISBN 0-95180-151-1 , 1993
  • Sea Cliffs Cwm Mawr to Gileston . (Glamorgan Heritage Coast Wildlife Series Volume 5). Glamorgan Wildlife Trust: Bridgend, 1994
  • Town Bred - Country Nurtured: A Naturalist Looks Back Fifty Years . ISBN 0-95340-740-3 , 1998
  • Island hopping in Tasmania's Roaring Forties . AH Stockwell Ltd: Devon. ISBN 0-72233-296-3 , 2000
  • Islands of the Trade Winds: An Indian Ocean Odyssey . Minerva Press. ISBN 0-75410-857-0 , 2000
  • The Garth Countryside: Part of Cardiff's green mantle, A Natural History . Lazy Cat Publishing: Cardiff. ISBN 0-95377-070-2 , 2001
  • A Natural History of Cardiff: Exploring along the River Taff, being an account of the animal and plant life in and around our capital city, Volume 2 . Lazy Cat Publishing: Cardiff, 2002
  • A Natural History of Cardiff: Exploring along the Rivers Rhymney and Roath . Dinefwr Publishers Ltd: Wales. ISBN 1-90432-311-1 , 2004
  • Memories of Welsh Islands . Gwasg Dinefwr Press: Llandybie. ISBN 1-90432-308-1 , 2004
  • Salt Wind from the Cape. Lazy Cat Publishing: Caerphilly, 2005
  • A Naturalist on Lundy: The Island Wildlife Over 50 Years . Halsgrove: UK. ISBN 1-84114-589-0 , 2007
  • Island Life. Discovering Britain's Offshore Gems . Halsgrove: UK. ISBN 1-84114-619-6 , 2007

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry at the Library of Congress
  2. ↑ Information in the Mary Gillham Archive Project
  3. ↑ Obituary from the Cardiff Naturalists
  4. ^ Anne S. Troelstra: Bibliography of Natural History Travel Narratives (ebook), Brill, 2017, ISBN 978-90-04-34378-8 , p. 171
personal data
SURNAME Gillham, Mary
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gillham, Mary Eleanor (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British naturalist, botanist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Ealing , London
DATE OF DEATH March 23, 2013 or March 24, 2013
Place of death Cardiff , Wales