Cookson, Isabel Clifton (1893 - 1973)

Melbourne. Botanist, paleontologist, botanical illustrator.

She was one of that country's first professional woman scientists. She is remembered as one of the most eminent palaeontologists of the twentieth century and had a distinguished research career of 58 years, authoring or co-authoring 93 scientific publications.

Isabel worked with great distinction on modern and fossil plants, and pioneered palynology in Australia. She was a consumate taxonomist and described, or jointly described, a prodigious total of 110 genera, 557 species and 32 subspecific taxa of palynomorphs and plants.

Cookson was a trained biologist and initially worked as a botanist during the 1920s. At the same time she became interested in fossil plants and then, Mesozoic-Cenozoic terrestrial (1940s-1950s) and aquatic (1950s-1970s) palynomorphs.

Her work on Paleogene and Neogene pollen and spores during the 1940s and 1950s provided incontrovertible evidence of the former widespread distribution of many important elements of Southern Hemisphere floras. During the early 1950s, while approaching her 60th year, Isabel turned her attention to marine palynomorphs.

During her early years, before specialising in palaeontology, she contributed some illustrations to A.J.Ewart and O.B.Davies, The Flora of the Northern Territory (1917).

Source: H.Hewson Australia - 300 Years of Botanical Illustration (1999)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03115518.2013.828252
Photo: Google Images, dates and name checked.