Helen Holme Simmons[1] FRS FLS (née Bancroft; 30 September 1887 – 2 October 1950), commonly known as Nellie Bancroft,[2][3][4] was a British botanist and scientific illustrator famous for her work on plant systematics and the anatomy of both living and fossil plants.
[1] Bancroft was while working for the Imperial Forestry Institute in France in 1940 captured by the Germans and spent four years in internment before being released and returning home in 1944.
Bancroft was then trained at Newnham College as a research student from 1911 to 1914 and earned a Doctor of Science degree at the University of Cambridge in 1915.
[5] Among her work was notable papers on the anatomy of fossil plants from India[6] and the systematics of extant cycads.
[2] By April 1942 she was interned alongside her husband at the Grand Hotel in Vittel, France.