Mary Ball (1812–1898) was an Irish naturalist and entomologist[1] most noted for her studies of Odonata and for her discovery of the stridulation in aquatic bugs in the family Corixidae.

There is not much known about Mary's training, but as a middle-class family she certainly would have access to a microscope and the latest volumes of natural history and scientific classification of the times.

Thompson named about twenty species of molluscs and crustaceans in her honour, including a small spiral snail Rissoa balliae in 1856.

[1] One of her most interesting finds was a specimen of the migratory locust figured in John Curtis's British Entomology - Folio 608 Locusta christii dated 1 August 1836.

[2] Mary Ball's Odonata were studied by the Belgian entomologist Michel Edmond de Selys-Longchamps on his visit to Dublin.