Thomas Alan Stephenson FRS (19 January 1898 – 3 April 1961) was a British naturalist and marine biologist who specialised in sea anemones.
[3] As Stephenson later recalled, "[w]e lived in the Governor’s well appointed house, and had the run of the large College grounds and kitchen-garden, so that we were brought up in all the surroundings and circumstances usual to gentlefolk of good education in the Edwardian period.
"[3] In 1904, Stephenson's father left the college and assumed the traditional role of a Wesleyan minister: "circuits," typically three years each, spent in different locations.
[9] The frequent moves were difficult for Stephenson, whose education was inevitably fragmented, and who found it impossible to establish childhood friendships.
Gifted in drawing, he made no special use of his ability until about the age of 60, when an interest in botany led him to begin painting a long series of portraits of British plants.
[3] Living in a 50-person dormitory and with few places to sit besides the library and classrooms, Stephenson eschewed school games in favor of long walks in the country.
[12][note 1] Stephenson matriculated at University College, Aberystwyth in October 1915, although his studies were interrupted by illness: tubercular infections of abdominal and cervical glands which later involved the appendix, requiring an operation and time in a sanatorium.
[note 2] "Perhaps their most important single contribution", according to V. S. Summerhayes, the botanist in charge of the orchid herbarium at Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, "was their recognition and definition of Orchis purpurella"—now Dactylorhiza purpurella—"which is now known as a widely spread member of the British flora".
[25] Stephenson was "an obvious choice", Yonge later wrote, given "his intimate acquaintance with the group of animals most closely allied to the madreporarian corals and his intense interest in marine biology".
[20] Stephenson held a number of academic posts in Britain, and at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.