Helen Marguerite Muir-Wood Explained

Helen Marguerite Muir-Wood (1895-16 January 1968) was a British paleontologist and historian of paleontology who spent her career at London's Natural History Museum.^[1] She is a recipient of the prestigious Lyell Medal for her contributions to the field.^[2]

Biography

Born in Hampstead, England, Helen Marguerite Muir-Wood studied geology at the University of London's Bedford College under Catherine Raisin. In 1919, she took a part-time job at the London Natural History Museum, rising through the ranks of geology assistants to become, in 1955, the first woman appointed Deputy Keeper of Palaeontology for the museum. She officially retired in 1961 but continued to do some work at the museum for another four years.^[2]

Muir-Wood was an authority on the shelled marine animals known as brachiopods, especially fossil types found in the British isles, the Middle East, India, and Malaysia. She published extensively on brachiopods and co-authored the section on brachiopods in the 1965 survey Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology.^[2]

In 1930, she was awarded the Lyell Fund by the Geological Society of London, and in 1958 she was honored with the Lyell Medal.^[1] On her retirement, she was awarded the Order of the British Empire for her services to the museum.^[2]

She died in Hampstead in 1968.^[2]

Selected publications

• Lang . William Dickson . Spath . Leonard Frank . Cox . Leslie Reginald . Muir-Wood . Helen Marguerite . The Belemnite Marls of Charmouth, a Series in the Lias of the Dorset Coast . Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society . 1928 . 84 . 1–4 . 179–222 . 10.1144/GSL.JGS.1928.084.01-04.06. 131695455 .
• Muir-Wood . Helen M. . On the internal structure of some Mesozoic Brachiopoda . Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B . 1934 . 223 . 494–508 . 511–567 . 10.1098/rstb.1934.0012 . 92240. 1934RSPTB.223..511M . free .
• Book: Muir-Wood . H.M. . 2 . The Mesozoic Palaeontology of British Somaliland, Geology and Palaeontology of British Somaliland Volume 2 . Jurassic Brachiopoda . 1935 . Colonial Office . London . 75–147.
• Muir-Wood . Helen M. . 2 . A Monograph on the Brachiopoda of the British Great Oolite Series. Part I. The Brachiopoda of the Fuller's Earth . Monographs of the Palaeontographical Society . 1936 . 89 . 404 . i-144 . 10.1080/02693445.1936.12035649.
• Book: Muir-Wood . H.M. . 2 . Malayan Lower Carboniferous fossils and their bearing on the Visean palaeogeography of Asia . 1948 . British Museum (Natural History) . London .
• Muir-Wood . Helen . Cooper . Gustav Arthur . 2 . A new species of the Jurassic brachiopod genus Septirhynchia . Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections . 1951 . 116 . 6 .
• Book: Muir-Wood . H.M. . 2 . A history of the classification of the phylum Brachiopoda. 1955 . British Museum (Natural History) . London.
• Book: Muir-Wood . H.M. . 2 . Report on the Brachiopoda of the John Murray Expedition. 1959 . John Murray Expeditions 1933-34 Scientific Reports . X, No 6 . 283–317 . British Museum (Natural History) . London .
• Book: Muir-Wood . H.M. . 2 . On the Morphology and Classification of the Brachiopod suborder Chonetoidea . 1962 . British Museum (Natural History) . London .

Further reading

• (Ager, Derek V). "Helen Marguerite Muir-Wood". Proceedings of the Geologists' Association 80:1 (1969) 122–24.

Notes and References

1. Dr H. M. Muir-Wood. Ellis. Owen. 14 March 1968. Nature. 217. 5135. 1294–1295. www.nature.com. 10.1038/2171294b0.
2. Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey. The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives From Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century. Routledge, 2003, p. 923.