The first Australian palynologist: Isabel Clifton Cookson (1893–1973) and her scientific work

Abstract

Isabel Clifton Cookson (1893–1973) of Melbourne, Australia, was one of that country’s first professional woman scientists. She is remembered as one of the most eminent palaeontologists of the twentieth century and had a distinguished research career of 58 years, authoring or co-authoring 93 scientific publications. Isabel worked with great distinction on modern and fossil plants, and pioneered palynology in Australia. She was a consumate taxonomist and described, or jointly described, a prodigious total of 110 genera, 557 species and 32 subspecific taxa of palynomorphs and plants. Cookson was a trained biologist and initially worked as a botanist during the 1920s. At the same time she became interested in fossil plants and then, Mesozoic–Cenozoic terrestrial (1940s–1950s) and aquatic (1950s–1970s) palynomorphs. Cookson’s research into the late Silurian–Early Devonian plants of Australia and Europe, particularly the Baragwanathia flora, between the 1920s and the 1940s was highly influential in the field of early plant evolution. The fossil plant genus Cooksonia was named for Isabel in 1937 by her principal mentor in palaeobotany, Professor William H. Lang. From the 1940s Cookson focussed on Cenozoic floras and, with her students, elucidated floral affinities by comparative analyses of micromorphology, anatomy and in situ pollen/spores between fossil and extant taxa. This led to an interest in pre-Quaternary and Quaternary terrestrial pollen and spores; hence Isabel was the first palynologist in Australia. Her work on Paleogene and Neogene pollen and spores during the 1940s and 1950s provided incontrovertible evidence of the former widespread distribution of many important elements of Southern Hemisphere floras. During the early 1950s, while approaching her 60th year, Isabel turned her attention to marine palynomorphs. She worked with great distinction with Georges Deflandre and Alfred Eisenack, and also as a sole author, on acritarchs, dinoflagellate cysts and prasinophytes from the Jurassic to Quaternary of Australia and Papua New Guinea. She also co-authored papers on aquatic palynomorphs with Lucy M. Cranwell, Norman F. Hughes and Svein B. Manum. Isabel Cookson laid out the taxonomic basis for the study of Australasian Mesozoic and Cenozoic marine palynofloras by establishing, or jointly establishing, 76 genera and 386 species of marine microplankton. Her studies throughout her career, although especially in marine palynology, concentrated largely on taxonomy. However, she was one of the first palynologists to demonstrate the utility of dinoflagellate cysts for relative age dating and correlation in geological exploration.

澳大利亚墨尔本的伊莎贝尔克利夫顿库克森 (Isabel Clifton Cookson, 1893-1973), 是该国首批专业女性科学家之一, 也是二十世纪最杰出的古生物学家之一。她有58年杰出研究生涯, 发表或共同发表93篇科学论文和出版物。伊莎贝尔对现生植物和植物化石进行了杰出的研究, 并在澳大利亚率先从事孢粉学研究。她是一个技能高超的分类学家, 描述或共同描述了110个属、 557个种和32个亚种的孢粉和植物。库克森是一个训练有素的生物学家, 最初在20世纪20年代曾是植物学家。与此同时, 她对植物化石产生了兴趣。随后, 对中-新生代陆生孢粉 (1940 – 1950) 和水生孢粉 (1950 – 1970) 产生了兴趣。在20世纪20年代和40年代期间她对澳洲和欧洲晚志留世 - 早泥盆世植物, 特别是Baragwanathia植物群, 的研究对

早期植物进化领域产生极大的影响。化石植物属Cooksonia是由她的古植物学主导师, 威廉 H 郎咸平教授于1937年为她命名的。自20世纪40年代开始, 库克森集中研究新生代植物群, 并与她的学生一起, 通过比较分析化石和现存类群之间的微观形态、解剖结构和原地花粉/孢子来阐明植物亲缘关系。这导致了她对前第四纪与第四纪陆生植物花粉和孢子的兴趣。因此伊莎贝尔可称为澳大利亚第一位孢粉学家。在20世纪40年代和50年代她对早第三纪和晚第三纪孢粉的研究工作无可辩驳地证明南半球植物区系的许多重要分子广泛分布。1950年代早期, 将近60岁的伊莎贝尔把注意力转向海洋孢粉。她曾与乔治Deflandre和阿尔弗雷德Eisenack合作 , 同时也单独工作, 对澳大利亚和巴布亚新几内亚侏罗纪至第四纪的疑源类, 甲藻和绿枝藻类进行了研究。她还与露西 M 克伦威尔、诺曼 F 休斯和斯韦恩 B Manum合作, 发表了关于水生孢粉的论文。伊莎贝尔 库克森建立或共同建立了海洋浮游生物的76个属和386个种, 为澳大利亚中生代和新生代海相孢粉植物群的研究奠定了分类学基础。在她的整个职业生涯中, 她的研究主要集中在分类学, 虽然海洋孢粉学是她的特别方向。然而, 她是第一批能够将甲藻孢囊用于相对年龄确定和地质勘探对比的孢粉学家之一。

Key words:

• Australia
• botany
• history
• Isabel C. Cookson
• palaeobotany
• palynology

Acknowledgements

The authors thank several Australian palynologists, including Noel de Jersey and John McKellar, for sharing their recollections of Isabel Cookson. Svein B. Manum (University of Oslo, Norway) and Jorunn Os Vigran (Trondheim, Norway) also provided valuable insights. JBR would like to thank his colleagues in the British Geological Survey (BGS) library, Paul Carter, Anne Dixon, Gill Nixon and Zoe Tomlinson, for their invaluable help in obtaining copies of many of Cookson’s papers. MED thanks Linden Gillbank, of the University of Melbourne, for information on the early history of the Department of Botany. Lee McCrae of the University of Melbourne Archives kindly provided the images used in Figs 1 and 6. Melissa Elliot of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra was very helpful in regard to obtaining the image in Fig. 5. The photograph of Eisenack’s microscope (Fig. 7) was taken by Wolfgang Gerber of the Department of Geosciences, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany. Caroline F. Adkin, Sev Kender and Paul J. Witney (BGS) kindly helped with the production of Figs 8, 10–12. Svein B. Manum kindly supplied the photograph reproduced here as Fig. 9. Svein B. Manum and Jörg Pross of the Institut für Geowissenschaften, Johan Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, Germany respectively, provided the images of Svalbardella cooksoniae in Fig. 10A, B. Clinton B. Foster of Geoscience Australia, Canberra, Australia kindly took both photographs of Cookson Place in Fig. 12. Bill Chaloner, Geoffrey Playford and Charles Wellman kindly commented on earlier drafts of the manuscript. Sev Kender (BGS) and two anonymous referees reviewed the manuscript. Stephen McLoughlin provided comprehensive and invaluable editorial input. James B. Riding publishes with the approval of the Executive Director, British Geological Survey (NERC).