Mary Gladys Thoday

[1] Educated by governess and at the Queen’s School, Chester, she gained a double first class pass in the natural science tripos at Girton College, Cambridge.

[2] Thoday was a Bathurst student and research fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge and a member of the University’s Marshall Ward Society.

[2] In 1919, the family moved to Cape Town, South Africa, where she completed Henry H. W. Pearson’s unfinished book on Gnetales.

[10] In 1932, she travelled to the Geneva World Disarmament Conference to deliver a Memorial taken from 135 meetings held in north Wales which demanded the end of arms exports.

She represented Britain at the Ninth World Congress of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in Czechoslovakia in 1937, where she spoke on 'Colonial Questions.

Mary Gladys Sykes (back row, second from left) with members of the Marshall Ward Society in 1909.