[6][7][8] Educated at the University of Queensland, Australia, she moved to London to teach high school students; she subsequently studied for a PhD there.
[10][11][12] Her research into the feeding behaviour of insects helped guide interventions designed to minimise crop pest damage.
[13][14] In 1986, she received the Vatican's highest scientific honour, the Pius XI Gold Medal of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
The first memoir, Six Legs Walking: Notes from an Entomological Live, described her childhood experiences with nature, her work with her husband as an applied entomologist in Africa, and her professional experiences as a woman in science moving from the science culture of the U.K. to a professorship at the University of California, Berkeley.
[16] Her second memoir, Across the Divide: The Strangest Love Affair, describes her personal and creative relationship with her wife Linda Hitchcock which included collaborating on children's nature books and travelling the southwestern U.S.[17] She was married to the English entomologist Reginald Frederick Chapman until his death in 2003.