Winifred Curtis Reserve

Biography

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winifred_Curtis

Curtis was born on 15 June 1905 in London, the only child of Herbert John Curtis and Elizabeth Winifred Curtis (née Baker).
Curtis lived in India for several years as a child after her father was posted there. She was a gifted student, and studied science at University College, London from 1924, winning various awards and scholarships. She graduated in 1927 and completed an honours degree in Botany the following year for research on Spartinia townsendii, and Taraxacum (dandelions). This was followed by several years of travel through Europe and teaching in Manchester and Hampstead.
In 1939 she emigrated to Australia with her family on the TSS Ascania where she initially took a teaching position as Science Mistress at the private girls' school Fahan School in Hobart. She later joined the Department of Biology at the University of Tasmania and took part in the creation of the Department of Botany there in 1945. In 1943 she started work on her The Students' Flora of Tasmania, a well known work on Tasmanian flora. The first volume was published in 1956; the fifth and final volume was published in 1994, more than 50 years after its commencement. From the early 1960s much of this was a close scientific collaboration with botanist and plant collector Dennis Ivor Morris (1924–2005) with whom she also shared a close friendship.^[1]
In 1944 Curtis published Variations in Pultenaea juniperina, the first record of polyploidy in an Australian native plant. This led to her PhD from London University which was awarded in 1950. Her doctoral thesis was titled Studies in Experimental Taxonomy and Variation in Certain Tasmanian Plants which was a pioneering work in cytology and polyploidy. Following from her doctoral award in London she travelled to the United States visiting various herbaria.
She was appointed University of Tasmania Senior Lecturer in Botany in 1951 and Reader in Botany in 1956, the most senior position held by a woman at the university at that time. Curtis also acted as Head of the Department on several occasions.
She submitted her published works to the University of London for a Doctor of Science degree in 1967 which was conferred in 1968.
From 1967 to 1978 she wrote the six-volume The Endemic Flora of Tasmania, with illustrations by Margaret Stones, a commission sponsored by Lord Talbot de Malahide.
Her mother died in 1962 and she nursed her father at home until his death in 1967. Dr. Curtis retired from the Department of Botany in 1966 and was appointed Honorary Research Fellow; she was made an Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Plant Science in 1998.
She died on 14 October 2005 in Hobart.^[2][3]


Bird List:

Black Swan	Cygnus atratus
Australian Shelduck	Tadorna tadornoides
Chestnut Teal	Anas castanea
Australian Pelican	Pelecanus conspicillatus
White-faced Heron	Egretta novaehollandiae
Brown Falcon	Falco berigora
Caspian Tern	Hydroprogne caspia
Pacific Gull	Larus pacificus
Silver Gull	Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae
Swift Parrot	Lathamus discolor
Horsfield's Bronze-Cuckoo	Chalcites basalis
Pallid Cuckoo	Cacomantis pallidus
Fan-tailed Cuckoo	Cacomantis flabelliformis
Superb Fairy-wren	Malurus cyaneus
Brown Thornbill (Tas. Subspecies)	Acanthiza pusilla diemenensis
Spotted Pardalote	Pardalotus punctatus
Striated Pardalote	Pardalotus striatus
Eastern Spinebill (Tas. Subspecies)	Acanthorhynchus tenuirostris dubius
Yellow-throated Honeyeater	Lichenostomus flavicollis
Little Wattlebird	Anthochaera chrysoptera tasmanica
Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike	Coracina novaehollandiae
Grey Shrike-thrush	Colluricincla harmonica
Dusky Woodswallow	Artamus cyanopterus
Grey Fantail (Tas. Subspecies)	Rhipidura fuliginosa albiscapa
Forest Raven	Corvus tasmanicus