Miriam Louisa Rothschild (1908 – 2005). British natural scientist and author with contributions to zoology, entomology, and botany.
Her father was Charles Rothschild of the Rothschild family and her mother Rózsika Edle Rothschild (née von Wertheimstein), a Hungarian sportswoman. Her brother was Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild and one of her sisters (Kathleen Annie) Pannonica Rothschild (Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter) would later be a bebop jazz enthusiast and patroness of Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker.
Her father had described about 500 new species of flea, and her uncle Lionel Walter Rothschild had built a private natural history museum at Tring. By the age of four she had started collecting ladybird beetles and caterpillars and taking a tame quail to bed with her.
She was educated at home until the age of 17, when she demanded to go to school. She thence attended evening classes in zoology at Chelsea College of Science and Technology and classes during the day in literature at Bedford College, London.
In 1943 she married Captain George Lane. Lane, a Hungarian-born British soldier, had changed his name from Lanyi in case of enemy capture. They had six children, four biological: Mary Rozsiska (1945–2010), Charles Daniel (born 1948), Charlotte Teresa (born 1951) and Johanna Miriam (born 1951); and two adopted. The marriage was dissolved in 1957 but the pair remained on good terms.
During the 1930s Rothschild made a name for herself at the Marine Biological Station in Plymouth, studying the mollusc Nucula and its trematode parasites.
Rothschild was a leading authority on fleas. She was the first person to work out the flea's jumping mechanism. She also studied the flea's reproductive cycle and linked this, in rabbits, to the hormonal changes within the host. Her New Naturalist book on parasitism (Fleas, Flukes and Cuckoos) was a huge success.
In addition to her work on fleas and other parasites, Rothschild studied insects in the order Lepidoptera. Specifically, she was interested in chemical ecology and mimicry.
Another area of Lepidoptera research that Rothschild pursued was that of the production of antibiotics by butterflies.
Rothschild was a pioneer among women in entomology and became the first woman trustee of the Natural History Museum (1967–1975), the first woman president of Royal Entomological Society (1993–1994), the first woman to serve on the Committee for Conservation of the National Trust, and the first woman member of the eight-member Entomological Club.
- "She had red hair (though it later greyed), a bulky figure and wore a loose, mauve silk dress and matching kerchief..." https://www.bionity.com/.../encycl.../Miriam_Rothschild.html
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