Mary Alice Willcox (April 24, 1856 – June 4, 1953) was an American zoologist and professor at Wellesley College.

[1] In 1856, Mary was born in Kennebunk, Maine, the eldest of three children of the congregational minister William H. Willcox and his wife Annie Holmes née Goodenow.

[2][3] Soon after her birth, the family moved to Reading, Massachusetts,[1] where Mary studied at Salem State Normal School in 1875.

[4] She completed her degree program in 1898 with a dissertation On the Anatomy of Acmaea fragilis (Chemnitz),[7] and was allowed to return to her position at Wellesley as head of the department.

[1] Much of her research at the college was on comparative anatomy of molluscs, a phylum of invertebrate animals, and of Acmaeidae, a family of sea snails.