Miriam Rothschild, High-Spirited Naturalist, Dies at 96
NY Times
Miriam Rothschild, the heiress who discovered how fleas jump, brought Chaucerian wildflowers back to modern England and was acknowledged as one of the world’s most distinguished naturalists, died Thursday at her home, Ashton Wold, in Northamptonshire. She was 96.
Her death was announced by her family.
Her extensive scientific and conservation achievements were matched by the might of her will and her delectably eccentric personality.
“Imagine Beatrix Potter on amphetamines,” The Times of London once said of her.
Though she viewed herself as a naturalist, more of a describer than an experimenter, she was taken seriously as a scientist and often worked with distinguished colleagues. Her well-known work on butterflies making themselves toxic by means of their food choices was done with the chemist Tadeus Reichstein, a Nobel Prize winner. Her highly original observations helped confirm 19th-century theories of evolution that had awaited 20th-century chemistry.
Dear Lord Rothschild: Birds, butterflies, and history
The Butterfly Gardener
A colour atlas of insect tissues via the flea
Rothschild’s Reserves: Time and Fragile Nature
