Background
Donald was born in 1855 in Carlisle.
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Jane Longstaff
Edit ProfileEducation
She was sent to a private girls" school in London, and then attended the Carlisle School of Artist
Career
She had three younger siblings. Although she never had any formal scientific education, she was interested in nature from a very early age, and particularly in snails and other landand freshwater-dwelling molluscs. Donald educated herself.
Her first paper on mollusks was read before a local scientific organisation in Cumberland in 1881.
She subsequently published nineteen more papers on fossil gastropods, starting with some on the local fossils of Cumberland in 1885. Given how neglected her field was, she realized a large-scale taxonomic revision was necessary, and she devoted decades to such a study, published in a series of papers in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, of which the last installment was published during 1933.
She was one of the few experts who could work on the gastropod fossils found by the Scottish fossil collector Elizabeth Gray. Because so few papers have been published on the taxa she studied, her taxonomic work remains relevant to the present day.
As a woman, Donald could not be employed by or formally affiliated with any particular museum, limiting her access to fossil collections and scientific communication.
She had to visit various museums, and travelled around Britain for this purpose. In 1906, she was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society. In addition to her malacological work, she had some interest in botany.
Based on her collections in the tropics, she published a number of papers and appendices to her husband"s books, most notably one on the freshwater and land molluscs of the southern Sudan.
She also took home some large land snails of the species Achatina zebra, and published a paper on their habits in captivity in 1921. George Blundell Longstaff died in 1921, after several years of ill health.
Jane Longstaff died at Bath, on 19 January 1935.
Achievements
Membership
Linnean Society of London. Geological Society of London]
J. G. Goodchild, a British Geological Survey expert on northern British geology who was a member of this organisation, suggested that Donald undertake a study of some neglected groups of fossil shells. She became a member of the Geological Society of London in 1883, and at the time of her death she was one of the longest-standing members.
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Born
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Died
January 19, 1935 (aged 79) -
Nationality
United Kingdom
Awards
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The Murchison Fund Murchison Fund
The Murchison Fund is an award given by the Geological Society of London to researchers under the age of 40 who have contributed substantially to the study of hard rock and tectonic geology.The Murchison Fund is an award given by the Geological Society of London to researchers under the age of 40 who have contributed substantially to the study of hard rock and tectonic geology.