Dr Mary Winifred Parke was the guiding force of British Phycology from 1950-70, was born on 23 March 1908 at Liverpool (England). She came under the influence of Dr. Margery Knight and started studying marine algae from 1930 onwards. Both were extremely hard workers and wrote 'Manx Algae' in 1931. This was not just the flora of Port Erin but the account of distribution, life-history, ecology, and developmental biology, all these branches were in their infancy at that time in phycological research.
Her richest contribution "culture of flagellates of phycoplanktons' came because of Prof. Orton who was working on artificial rearing of oysters. He entrusted Mary with isolating and culturing the best suitable food source. Her efforts succeeded in isolating and developing six organisms one of which Isochrysis galbana later became the most important food source in mariculture.
Mary was appointed as Botanist at Plymouth Laboratory in 1947. She painstakingly isolated several flagellates and established world-famous 'Plymouth Culture Collection' which is still maintained and remained a valuable source of standard material of various algal species for research to date.
Her chanced encounter with Prof. Irene Manton who developed techniques for studying gametes of mosses and ferns with the newly developed 'electron microscope', has established life long association between these two researchers. This has culminated at the beginning of classic papers on marine flagellates through the electron microscope - which was very much fascinating at that time. This magnificent collaboration has resulted in describing three new genera, 16 new species of marine flagellates.
While studying these organisms they realized that what was described as the third flagellum in some species is in fact a new structure to which they coined the term 'hepatonema'. Further research elaborated the fact that a whole group of flagellates previously included in Chrysophyceae possessed this structure thus they created a new class 'Haptophyceae'.
This class was later even elevated to the separate division 'Haptophyta' because of its evolutionary significance. This remains one of the greatest contributions of Mary along with her collaborator Irene Manton to phycology till today. Mary through her meticulous observations on her cultures also showed that what appeared to be two very different organisms with different scale covers, Crystallolithus hyalinus, and Coccolithus pelagicus were rather different life-history phases of the same species.
She also showed Pachysphaera and Pterosperma have the flagellate stage in their life history. She coined the word 'phycoma' to spherical non-motile life stage. This discovery opened up a new chapter in the identification of new groups. The Phycoma stage contains large quantities of oil material consequently readily floats to the water surface and thus mostly ignored by researchers who use sediments to study phytoplanktons.
Mary insisted that all phytoplankton samples should be kept stand overnight and the surface layer should be skimmed off and studied. This new methodology approach greatly advanced our knowledge about 'Prasinophyceae'. She was thus credited with the discovery of heteromorphic life history in Prasinophyceae. Mary was a founding member of 'British Phycological Society' and served on its executive council for many years, being President in 1959 and again in 1960. She was also Editor of 'British Phycological Journal' now renamed as 'European Journal of Phycology'.
Her contributions were so stellar that 'Liverpool University' who conferred DSc, her laboratory was deemed to be part of the university. The Vice-Chancellor and Registrar traveled to Plymouth and the degree was conferred on her. This was due to her bad health due to which she was unfit to travel. The ceremony was very moving and Mary was very proud of the honour.
She was also a 'Fellow of Royal Society of London'. Some other international honours include Corresponding Membership of the Royal Botanical Society of the Netherlands, Membership of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. She died on 17 July 1989 after a brief illness. A rich legacy of work carried out by Mary still encourages several researchers throughout the world today.
Data compiled by: Dr. Vaibhav A. Mantri, Principal Scientist & Divisional Chair, CSIR-CSMCRI, Bhavnagar, Gujarat, India.
Source Credit: "Prominent Phycologists of the 20th Century" by David J Garbary and Michael J. Wynne (Eds)
Read about other prominent Phycologists here
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