Marjorie Guthrie obituary

Marjorie Guthrie, whose PhD was on salt-marsh protozoans, would often set off in waders with her husband Simon to study the complicated ecosystems of remote ponds

Our mom, the zoologist Marjorie Guthrie, who has died aged 86, was a man or woman of massive vitality and broad intellectual interests, who was a pioneer in the male-dominated globe of science following the second globe war.

Brought up in modest situations in Liverpool, Marjorie (nee Webb) attended Holly Lodge substantial school, where an inspirational headteacher encouraged her to apply to Newnham College, Cambridge. There she grew to become a single of the 1st ladies to get a full Cambridge undergraduate degree, in 1948.

She returned to Liverpool for her PhD the place, armed with relatively rudimentary gear, she meticulously logged the protozoans of salt marshes and the “social structure of their communities”. Later, she invested content summers at the Ferry Home laboratory of the Freshwater Biological Association on Lake Windermere, mapping how complex protozoan ecosystems are affected by the cataclysmic seasonal “turnover” of lakes.

Appointed as a lecturer in the zoology division at Leicester University, Marjorie balanced a hefty teaching load on subjects from physiology to palaeontology with dashing up to the Lake District to continue her ecological analysis. She acquired an eclectic circle of buddies from across the arts and sciences in the senior widespread room at Leicester, and became engaged to a fellow zoology lecturer, Simon Guthrie. Their marriage in 1958 and the arrival of children presaged the demise of critical science, as the conscientious Marjorie took enthusiastically to motherhood.

Simon’s occupation progression necessitated moves to Aberdeen and then Manchester, the place Marjorie, a frank feminist, was hampered by adverse attitudes and inflexible departmental rules. As a tutor for the Open University and a teacher at Cheadle Hulme school, Marjorie associated strongly to the struggles of college students outdated and younger. She would trap fruit flies in the backyard for lab practicals, employing milk bottles baited with mashed banana.

Retirement in the Lake District brought a scientific renaissance, and she wrote a book, Animals of the Surface Film (1989), featuring those miraculous creatures we must never ever denigrate as “pond lifestyle”. She and Simon would set off with waders and collecting pots to sample remote ponds in search of water boatmen or the endangered medicinal leech.

Marjorie’s conservation function as a volunteer for the Cumbria Wildlife Believe in was recognised in 2013 with the award of a Badger’s Paw. A lifelong Guardian reader, Marjorie was also an avid concert-goer and patron of the arts, supporting Lake District Summertime Music, and Abbot Hall Artwork Gallery.

Simon died in 2000. Marjorie is survived by us and by her grandchildren, Becky, Iona, David and Leo.

Marjorie Guthrie obituary