[1] Patricia Anne Wolsely studied botany at Somerville College, Oxford and then was employed at the Natural History Museum, London from 1960.
[2] From 1966 until 1977 she worked at the University of Malta then returning to the Natural History Museum in London first as a Leverhulme Research Fellow and then as a Scientific Associate.
Her first research project about lichens, working with Peter James, was in the Celtic rain forest on the west Wales coast which resulted in adding 250 species to the list of those present in the area.
The effects of the composition of the air on lichens, particularly sulphur and nitrogen compounds, is a focus of her work.
The age of the substrate on which the lichens are growing provides information on past air composition, since species differ in their tolerance or sensitivity to compounds like ammonia, nitrogen oxides or sulphur dioxide.