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In Memorium---Dame Miriam Rothschild
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Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2005 09:30:27 -0500
From: "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: SPKlein52@HotMail.com
Subject: from Sir Thomas Browne to Vladimir Nabokov ...
To: spklein52@hotmail.com
[1] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-1450821,00.html[2]
Dame Miriam Rothschild
The Times - UK
... published in her eighties, is in the best tradition of authors
who combine science, literature and a sense of wonder, from Sir
Thomas Browne to VLADIMIR NABOKOV ... [3]
Obituaries
January 22, 2005
Dame Miriam Rothschild
Revered naturalist whose passionate love of conservation and the
countryside persisted will into her nineties
A SCIENTIST of scholarship and distinction, Dame Miriam Rothschild
was known primarily for her writings on butterflies and fleas, though
she also published more than 300 highly technical papers on subjects
such as bird behaviour and parasitic castration. Several of the
papers concern a group of odoriferous chemicals called pyrazines
which — as she noticed in 1961 — are widespread in nature and play a
part in triggering brain functions such as memory and alertness.
Her major academic work was the Catalogue of the Rothschild
Collection of Fleas, the six volumes of which appeared over thirty
years. It was an area of research, as she wrily recognised, that was
not always appreciated socially, as for instance when her children
were at school. Nonetheless, her results were remarkable. She found,
for instance, that the widely underestimated flea develops an
acceleration of 149g when taking off — twenty times more than a Moon
rocket re-entering EarthÂ’s atmosphere. The Rothschild collection of
hundreds of thousands of specimens was transferred to the Natural
History Museum in 1971.
Yet Rothschild carried her erudition lightly and whimsically, as
befitted a member of her remarkable family (she was sister of the 3rd
Lord Rothschild). Her lyrical writing, in particular in _Butterfly
Cooing like a Dove,_ published in her eighties, is in the best
tradition of authors who combine science, literature and a sense of
wonder, from Sir Thomas Browne to Vladimir Nabokov. “Nobody has
really thought about what is so satisfying in nature,” she once said,
“but people really do benefit from contact with plants, animals, birds
and butterflies. Without them we are a deprived species.”
Between 1899 and 1913, the Rothschild family won 374 awards from the
Royal Horticultural Society. Each Rothschild strove to outdo the
others — Alfred, for instance, planted one of every British species
of tree in his garden — and altogether they created 100 gardens all
over Europe, which Miriam Rothschild documented in her book _The
Rothschild Gardens_ (1997).
Miriam RothschildÂ’s own gardening, however, took a different turn.
As a child she had her own vegetable patch, as well as a cactus
collection in a miniature greenhouse, and she went on to win prizes
at Chelsea for orchids. But later she returned to her childhood love
of wild flowers, allowing them to reclaim much that had been artfully
denatured by Edwardian garden planning. Greenhouses that were once
devoted to exotic fruit were turned over to the cultivation of
wayside flowers.
“One day the penny dropped,” she said, “and I realised with dismay
that wild flowers had been drained, bulldozed, weedkillered and
fertilised out of the fields, and that we now had a countryside
reminiscent of a snooker table.” Gardeners, she proclaimed, should
not battle against nature — the endless struggle to keep the weeds
down — but should allow it to flourish.
She began her first meadow garden in 1970 — “John Clare’s
countryside resurrected,” she called it — and eventually 150 acres
were filled with wild flowers. One field was later said to contain
115 different species. The Prince of Wales listened to her ideas, and
asked her to sow her “farmer’s nightmare” mixture of seeds at
Highgrove, and she was delighted to find that she had started a
fashion.
In her zeal she even planted a bypass with primroses and cowslips,
ladiesÂ’ smocks and buttercups, to brighten the verges and encourage
butterflies. In her seventies she sponsored the distribution of seeds
to schools, and experimented with caterpillars which might destroy
cannabis before the crop ripened.
She was a tremendous friend to the cause of conservation, which came
entirely naturally to her. She pioneered humane livestock methods and
campaigned against the widespread use of insecticides. The tone was
set in _The Butterfly Gardener,_ which opened with the words: “I
garden purely for pleasure. I love plants and flowers and green
leaves and I am incurably romantic — hankering after small stars
spangling the grass.”
Entranced by the worlds she saw out of the window and through the
microscope Miriam Rothschild continued her “scientific play” into her
nineties. She continued to publish, too, contributing notes and papers
to journals and providing passionate introductions to books on
gardening and wildflowers.
Born in 1908, Miriam Louisa Rothschild reached the scientific
heights despite — or, as she delighted to say, because of — having
had no formal academic instruction (her eight doctorates of science
were all honorary). She claimed to have been “self-non-educated”, but
this understated the remarkable experience of her childhood, much of
it spent at Tring Park, the Wren house at the foot of the Chilterns
which was the country seat of her grandfather (the first Jewish
member of the House of Lords). Such a home could not help but be an
education.
Long before most people were aware of environmental issues, her
father, Charles Rothschild, campaigned for a national network of
nature reserves. One of the first people to realise the importance of
preserving habitats as well as species, he nominated 280 potential
sites, before dying in his forties in 1923. In 1997 Miriam wrote
_RothschildÂ’s Reserves_ with Peter Marren (she liked to have a
collaborator, to focus her projects), and found that 80 years had
devastated the nature reserves, with species counts falling even
where the reserves themselves had not disappeared under concrete. The
book concluded that nature cannot live in reserves alone, but depends
on the practices that farmers adopt, guided by the incentives and
restrictions of governments.
The senior Rothschild at Tring was CharlesÂ’s elder brother Walter,
the 2nd Lord Rothschild, who built up a vast private museum of
stuffed animals, birds, insects and reptiles (now a large part of the
Natural History Museum). By any standards he was one of EnglandÂ’s
greatest eccentrics. He kept kangaroos, emus, cassowaries and
salamanders, and once drove himself along Piccadilly and into
Buckingham Palace in a buggy pulled by zebras.
A child at Tring learnt much about animals and perhaps more about
humans. Large sums were spent on financing expeditions to remote
places to fill gaps in the collections, and 5,000 new species were
discovered. Live creatures arrived too, and giant turtles, kangaroos
and wild horses roamed the grounds.
As a child Miriam Rothschild had an owl as a pet, and a quail; at
the age of 4 she was _Country Life_’s “youngest milker”. In 1983 she
honoured her uncleÂ’s memory by publishing a highly praised biography,
Dear Lord Rothschild.
Her father was given a 1,200-acre rural estate near Oundle, where he
built Ashton Wold, and renewed the village of Ashton, bringing running
water to the residents and organising village events. Later, Miriam
Rothschild, who lived there until her death, rehabilitated the
watermill to supply electricity to the house, and established the
National Dragonfly Museum there.
After her home education she attended evening classes in zoology at
Chelsea Polytechnic and took classes in literature during the day at
Bedford College. Meanwhile, she was asked to play both cricket and
squash for England. Her earliest scientific research was on marine
parasitology, some of it carried out at the marine laboratory in
Naples, where she won a scholarship — because, she said, “no one else
applied”.
During the war she worked at the Foreign Office, and then for several
years she was a visiting professor in biology at the Royal Free
Hospital.
Voluble, argumentative and brimming with vivid observations, she
felt that study of the variety of nature broadened the mind. “Human
beings are apt to regard their own personal structure as ‘normal’ and
everything that differs from it as distinctly humorous.” Discovering
an insect that urinates out of its head — and why not? — widens the
realm of possibility. It was in that spirit of tolerance, during the
1950s, that Rothschild campaigned with the geneticist E. B. Ford for
the legalisation of homosexual acts. She also kept a collection of
art by schizophrenics, inspired by her sister Liberty (Elizabeth),
who lived for some years with Miriam at Ashton Wold until her death
in 1988.
She was a trustee of the Natural History Museum, and her honours
included an honorary fellowship of St HughÂ’s College, Oxford, and the
Royal Horticultural SocietyÂ’s highest award, the Victoria Medal. She
was also president of the Royal Entomological Society. She was
appointed CBE in 1982, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1985
and advanced to DBE in 2000.
Disapproving of the methods of slaughter used in Britain, she did
not eat meat, or use cosmetics. She also refused to wear leather
shoes, and instead liked to wear white wellingtons in summer and
moonboots in winter. Her wellingtons caused a considerable stir at
Prince CharlesÂ’s 40th birthday ball at Buckingham Palace.
In 1943 she married Captain George Lane, and they had two sons and
four daughters. The marriage was dissolved in 1957 — “I don’t really
like marriage”, she concluded. She is survived by a son and three
daughters.
Dame Miriam Rothschild, DBE, FRS, naturalist, entomologist, gardener
and conservationist, was born on August 5, 1908. She died on January
20, 2005, aged 96.
Links:
------
[1] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
[2] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-1450821,00.html
[3] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
----- End forwarded message -----
Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2005 09:30:27 -0500
From: "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: SPKlein52@HotMail.com
Subject: from Sir Thomas Browne to Vladimir Nabokov ...
To: spklein52@hotmail.com
[1] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-1450821,00.html[2]
Dame Miriam Rothschild
The Times - UK
... published in her eighties, is in the best tradition of authors
who combine science, literature and a sense of wonder, from Sir
Thomas Browne to VLADIMIR NABOKOV ... [3]
Obituaries
January 22, 2005
Dame Miriam Rothschild
Revered naturalist whose passionate love of conservation and the
countryside persisted will into her nineties
A SCIENTIST of scholarship and distinction, Dame Miriam Rothschild
was known primarily for her writings on butterflies and fleas, though
she also published more than 300 highly technical papers on subjects
such as bird behaviour and parasitic castration. Several of the
papers concern a group of odoriferous chemicals called pyrazines
which — as she noticed in 1961 — are widespread in nature and play a
part in triggering brain functions such as memory and alertness.
Her major academic work was the Catalogue of the Rothschild
Collection of Fleas, the six volumes of which appeared over thirty
years. It was an area of research, as she wrily recognised, that was
not always appreciated socially, as for instance when her children
were at school. Nonetheless, her results were remarkable. She found,
for instance, that the widely underestimated flea develops an
acceleration of 149g when taking off — twenty times more than a Moon
rocket re-entering EarthÂ’s atmosphere. The Rothschild collection of
hundreds of thousands of specimens was transferred to the Natural
History Museum in 1971.
Yet Rothschild carried her erudition lightly and whimsically, as
befitted a member of her remarkable family (she was sister of the 3rd
Lord Rothschild). Her lyrical writing, in particular in _Butterfly
Cooing like a Dove,_ published in her eighties, is in the best
tradition of authors who combine science, literature and a sense of
wonder, from Sir Thomas Browne to Vladimir Nabokov. “Nobody has
really thought about what is so satisfying in nature,” she once said,
“but people really do benefit from contact with plants, animals, birds
and butterflies. Without them we are a deprived species.”
Between 1899 and 1913, the Rothschild family won 374 awards from the
Royal Horticultural Society. Each Rothschild strove to outdo the
others — Alfred, for instance, planted one of every British species
of tree in his garden — and altogether they created 100 gardens all
over Europe, which Miriam Rothschild documented in her book _The
Rothschild Gardens_ (1997).
Miriam RothschildÂ’s own gardening, however, took a different turn.
As a child she had her own vegetable patch, as well as a cactus
collection in a miniature greenhouse, and she went on to win prizes
at Chelsea for orchids. But later she returned to her childhood love
of wild flowers, allowing them to reclaim much that had been artfully
denatured by Edwardian garden planning. Greenhouses that were once
devoted to exotic fruit were turned over to the cultivation of
wayside flowers.
“One day the penny dropped,” she said, “and I realised with dismay
that wild flowers had been drained, bulldozed, weedkillered and
fertilised out of the fields, and that we now had a countryside
reminiscent of a snooker table.” Gardeners, she proclaimed, should
not battle against nature — the endless struggle to keep the weeds
down — but should allow it to flourish.
She began her first meadow garden in 1970 — “John Clare’s
countryside resurrected,” she called it — and eventually 150 acres
were filled with wild flowers. One field was later said to contain
115 different species. The Prince of Wales listened to her ideas, and
asked her to sow her “farmer’s nightmare” mixture of seeds at
Highgrove, and she was delighted to find that she had started a
fashion.
In her zeal she even planted a bypass with primroses and cowslips,
ladiesÂ’ smocks and buttercups, to brighten the verges and encourage
butterflies. In her seventies she sponsored the distribution of seeds
to schools, and experimented with caterpillars which might destroy
cannabis before the crop ripened.
She was a tremendous friend to the cause of conservation, which came
entirely naturally to her. She pioneered humane livestock methods and
campaigned against the widespread use of insecticides. The tone was
set in _The Butterfly Gardener,_ which opened with the words: “I
garden purely for pleasure. I love plants and flowers and green
leaves and I am incurably romantic — hankering after small stars
spangling the grass.”
Entranced by the worlds she saw out of the window and through the
microscope Miriam Rothschild continued her “scientific play” into her
nineties. She continued to publish, too, contributing notes and papers
to journals and providing passionate introductions to books on
gardening and wildflowers.
Born in 1908, Miriam Louisa Rothschild reached the scientific
heights despite — or, as she delighted to say, because of — having
had no formal academic instruction (her eight doctorates of science
were all honorary). She claimed to have been “self-non-educated”, but
this understated the remarkable experience of her childhood, much of
it spent at Tring Park, the Wren house at the foot of the Chilterns
which was the country seat of her grandfather (the first Jewish
member of the House of Lords). Such a home could not help but be an
education.
Long before most people were aware of environmental issues, her
father, Charles Rothschild, campaigned for a national network of
nature reserves. One of the first people to realise the importance of
preserving habitats as well as species, he nominated 280 potential
sites, before dying in his forties in 1923. In 1997 Miriam wrote
_RothschildÂ’s Reserves_ with Peter Marren (she liked to have a
collaborator, to focus her projects), and found that 80 years had
devastated the nature reserves, with species counts falling even
where the reserves themselves had not disappeared under concrete. The
book concluded that nature cannot live in reserves alone, but depends
on the practices that farmers adopt, guided by the incentives and
restrictions of governments.
The senior Rothschild at Tring was CharlesÂ’s elder brother Walter,
the 2nd Lord Rothschild, who built up a vast private museum of
stuffed animals, birds, insects and reptiles (now a large part of the
Natural History Museum). By any standards he was one of EnglandÂ’s
greatest eccentrics. He kept kangaroos, emus, cassowaries and
salamanders, and once drove himself along Piccadilly and into
Buckingham Palace in a buggy pulled by zebras.
A child at Tring learnt much about animals and perhaps more about
humans. Large sums were spent on financing expeditions to remote
places to fill gaps in the collections, and 5,000 new species were
discovered. Live creatures arrived too, and giant turtles, kangaroos
and wild horses roamed the grounds.
As a child Miriam Rothschild had an owl as a pet, and a quail; at
the age of 4 she was _Country Life_’s “youngest milker”. In 1983 she
honoured her uncleÂ’s memory by publishing a highly praised biography,
Dear Lord Rothschild.
Her father was given a 1,200-acre rural estate near Oundle, where he
built Ashton Wold, and renewed the village of Ashton, bringing running
water to the residents and organising village events. Later, Miriam
Rothschild, who lived there until her death, rehabilitated the
watermill to supply electricity to the house, and established the
National Dragonfly Museum there.
After her home education she attended evening classes in zoology at
Chelsea Polytechnic and took classes in literature during the day at
Bedford College. Meanwhile, she was asked to play both cricket and
squash for England. Her earliest scientific research was on marine
parasitology, some of it carried out at the marine laboratory in
Naples, where she won a scholarship — because, she said, “no one else
applied”.
During the war she worked at the Foreign Office, and then for several
years she was a visiting professor in biology at the Royal Free
Hospital.
Voluble, argumentative and brimming with vivid observations, she
felt that study of the variety of nature broadened the mind. “Human
beings are apt to regard their own personal structure as ‘normal’ and
everything that differs from it as distinctly humorous.” Discovering
an insect that urinates out of its head — and why not? — widens the
realm of possibility. It was in that spirit of tolerance, during the
1950s, that Rothschild campaigned with the geneticist E. B. Ford for
the legalisation of homosexual acts. She also kept a collection of
art by schizophrenics, inspired by her sister Liberty (Elizabeth),
who lived for some years with Miriam at Ashton Wold until her death
in 1988.
She was a trustee of the Natural History Museum, and her honours
included an honorary fellowship of St HughÂ’s College, Oxford, and the
Royal Horticultural SocietyÂ’s highest award, the Victoria Medal. She
was also president of the Royal Entomological Society. She was
appointed CBE in 1982, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1985
and advanced to DBE in 2000.
Disapproving of the methods of slaughter used in Britain, she did
not eat meat, or use cosmetics. She also refused to wear leather
shoes, and instead liked to wear white wellingtons in summer and
moonboots in winter. Her wellingtons caused a considerable stir at
Prince CharlesÂ’s 40th birthday ball at Buckingham Palace.
In 1943 she married Captain George Lane, and they had two sons and
four daughters. The marriage was dissolved in 1957 — “I don’t really
like marriage”, she concluded. She is survived by a son and three
daughters.
Dame Miriam Rothschild, DBE, FRS, naturalist, entomologist, gardener
and conservationist, was born on August 5, 1908. She died on January
20, 2005, aged 96.
Links:
------
[1] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
[2] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-1450821,00.html
[3] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
----- End forwarded message -----