Mary Agard Pocock (31 December 1886 – 10 July 1977) was a South African phycologist.
[1] Pocock then attended the University of London where she studied botany, receiving her degree in 1908.
In 1925 she travelled with Dorothea Bleek from Rhodesia to Luanda collecting flowering plants which she studied at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew and the British Museum upon her return.
Travelling back to South Africa, Pocock became interested in algae, obtaining a PhD on the subject from the University of Cape Town at the age of 46.
[3] Pocock in collaboration with Marion S. Cave became the first group to identify how many chromosomes algae have.