Mark Alexander Wynter Blyth

Mark Alexander Wynter-Blyth (15 August 1906 – 16 April 1963 Leysin, Switzerland) was an English schoolteacher and amateur naturalist who wrote one of the first field guides to the butterflies of the Indian region. He was also involved in censuses of the Asiatic lion at the Gir forest.

Wynter-Blyth was born at Harrow-on-the-Hill, Middlesex, studied at Sedbergh School, Yorkshire and Magdalene College, Cambridge. He took an interest in nature study while still a student and moved to India in 1936 to become a house master at Bishop Cotton School. He later became headmaster of the preparatory school and here his meeting with A E Jones, an amateur lepidopterist, made him interested in butterflies. In 1941 he moved to the Nilgiris to take up a position as headmaster at St. George's School in Ketti; the school, which had been first recognized by the Education Department of Madras as a free primary school, was raised to the status of a high school in 1944 during his tenure. During the war, he was called to service but found unfit for active service and declined a staff appointment. In 1946 he moved to Saurashtra as a private tutor and from 1948 to 1963 until his death, he was the principal of the Rajkumar College, Rajkot, a school founded and run by the Princely Order of Kathiawar. He died in Switzerland of coronary thrombosis on 16 April 1963.

His book, Butterflies of the Indian Region published by the Bombay Natural History Society in 1957 was for a long time the only handy guide to butterflies in India.