Mark Alexander Wynter-Blyth

Mark Alexander Wynter-Blyth (occasionally unhyphenated; 15 August 1906 – 16 April 1963) was an English schoolteacher and amateur naturalist who wrote one of the first field guides to the butterflies of the Indian region.

[1][2][3] Wynter-Blyth was born at Harrow-on-the-Hill, Middlesex to Christiana Mary (nee Armstrong) and Meredith Blyth - she was the daughter of the Medical Officer for Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Meredith was a public analyst and analytical chemist working on coal by-products for Brighton and Eastbourne Corporations (his father Alexander Wynter Blyth was another public analyst, chemist and toxicologist).

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 a meeting with A. E. Jones (1877-1947), an well-known amateur naturalist in Shimla, led to an interest in butterflies.

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.