Dorothea Pertz

Dorothea Frances Matilda "Dora" Pertz FLS (14 March 1859 – 6 March 1939) was a British botanist. She co-authored five papers with Francis Darwin, Charles Darwin's son. She was made a Fellow of the Linnean Society, among the first women admitted to full membership.

In 1905 she was made a fellow of the Linnean Society, among the first women admitted as full members,[1] though she did not take part in the movement advocating for women to be fellows.[2] After Darwin's retirement, Pertz was encouraged by Frederick Blackman to undertake research on meristematic tissue, but after a year observing germinating seeds her results were inconclusive.[1] She abandoned research, possibly over disappointment, though Agnes Arber claimed "she came to recognize that the plant physiology of the twentieth century was developing on lines widely divergent from those on which she had been educated and that it demanded a grasp of mathematics, physics, and chemistry, which she did not possess."[3]

After Pertz had given up research, at Blackman's suggestion she worked on indexing German literature on plant physiology, including the journals Biochemische Zeitschrift and Zeitschrift für Physiologische Chemie. Despite the difficulty of the task, she completed the index up to the year 1935.[3] Between 1923 and 1936 she provided illustrations for her friend Edith Rebecca Saunders' series of papers on floral anatomy, and both the paper and illustrations were highly respected.[1][4] Pertz did much of her work unpaid out of passion for science,[1] and she never had a formal appointment at Newnham or the university. She also performed charity work, including working as a masseuse at a convalescent hospital in Cambridge during the First World War.[2]

After several years of illness Dora Pertz died in Cambridge on 6 March 1939. She was cremated and buried at Brookwood Cemetery.[2]