Mary Gillham

Mary Gillham

Dr Mary Eleanor Gillham (born 1921) is an English naturalist, university lecturer, and writer, currently resident in Radyr, in Cardiff, Wales.

Although born in a London suburb, and serving five wartime years in the Women's Land Army in Berkshire, Mary Gillham has spent much of her time in Wales. As a post-war student in the University of Wales at Aberystwyth and Bangor, she gained a degree in agriculture, a first-class honours in botany, and a doctorate in island ecology. She has lectured in the universities of Exeter (Devon), Massey (New Zealand), Melbourne (Australia), Kano (Nigeria), and worked in the Adult Education Department at University College Cardiff from 1961 until her retirement in 1988.

As a teacher of adult amateur naturalists, she saw her role as an interpreter of scientific data for the layman, and has taken to writing books and popular articles. Spray-washed seabird colonies are her main love, and research on these has taken her to remote islands in many parts of the world, where she has lived in tents, huts, lighthouses, etc. Her major research projects have been around the coasts of West Wales, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, and she was one of the first women to join an Antarctic expedition (in 1959/60).

In 1970, she undertook a research project on Aldabra in the Indian Ocean, and has since taken naturalists to the Seychelles. In 1979, she was visiting scientist on an American expedition (by sailing ship) to an uninhabited island in the Bahamas, and has taken parties to Jamaica, New England, and the Rocky Mountains. Other expeditions have been to North, West, East, and Central Africa, and Florida, and she has led groups to various parts of Britain and Europe. Active in various natural history and conservation bodies over several decades, Gillham is a sometime president of the Glamorgan Naturalists' Trust and of the Cardiff Naturalists Society.

In 2008 Dr Gillham was awarded an MBE for services to nature conservation in South Wales.