Fields Phycology Thesis (1925) | Name Elsie Conway | |
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Born Elsie Phillips
15 March 1902
Aldford, Cheshire, England ( 1902-03-15 ) Died 22 July 1992(1992-07-22) (aged 90)
Chester, Cheshire, England Institutions Durham University
University of Glasgow Alma mater University of Liverpool | ||
Doctoral advisor John McLean Thompson | ||
Elsie Conway (née Phillips, 15 March 1902 – 22 July 1992) was a British phycologist. She served as president of the British Phycological Society from 1965 to 1967, and was one of the few female Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
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Biography
Conway was born Elsie Phillips on 15 March 1902 in Aldford, Cheshire, England, the elder daughter of William and Margaret Phillips. She attended the Queen's School in Chester from 1912 to 1919. She then won studied botany at the University of Liverpool, graduating BSc in 1922, BSc(Hons) in 1923, and PhD in 1925. Her thesis, supervised by John McLean Thompson, was on floral morphology.
She was appointed to a lectureship in botany at Durham University in 1925, but, as was then the norm, gave it up when she married Geoffrey Seymour Conway, an England rugby union representative and son of Robert Seymour Conway, at the Church of St Mary's-without the-Walls, Chester, on 28 June 1928. The couple divorced in 1948.
Conway returned to university life in 1938, at the University of Glasgow where she continued until retiring in 1969. In 1952 she was a co-founder of the British Phycological Society and later served as its president from 1965 to 1967. From 1967 to 1969 she was president of the Andersonian Naturalists of Glasgow, and also vice-president of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1967. Between 1955 and 1965, Conway was the editor of the British Phycological Bulletin.
After her retirement from Glasgow, Conway undertook a visiting professorship at the University of British Columbia between 1969 and 1970, and then, from 1970 to 1972, a professorial fellowship at the University of Otago. She returned to British Columbia between 1972 and 1974 for further study of the genus Porphyra in Canada's northeast Pacific region. In later life she returned to live in Chester and died on 22 July 1992.
Publications
The standard author abbreviation E.Conway is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
Family
Her eldest son is John Conway, professor emeritus of history at the University of British Columbia. Her second son, Robert Conway, was a senior lecturer in radioastronomy at University of Manchester. A third son, Martin Conway, was president of the Selly Oak Colleges in Birmingham.