Winifred Tutin; botanist reconstructed British landscape through pollen analysis
Hyfler/Rosner
May 23, 2007 Wednesday
First Edition
WINIFRED TUTIN;
Lakeland botanist who reconstructed the prehistory of the
British landscape through pollen analysis
BYLINE: Elizabeth Y. Haworth
Winifred Tutin was a pioneer in the study of plant remains
(pollen and diatoms) found in lake sediments as a record of
environmental history, and she greatly contributed to the
recognition and advancement of the science of
palaeo-ecology. In a long, productive academic career, she
was associated principally with the Freshwater Biological
Association and Leicester University.
Born Winifred Pennington in Barrow-in-Furness in 1915, she
was educated at Barrow-in-Furness Grammar School and
graduated in Botany from Reading University. Her PhD,
supervised by Harry Godwin, included studies of both living
algae and those in the sedimentary record of Lake
Windermere. Her connection with the Freshwater Biological
Association (FBA) began as a summer student and her interest
in palaeoecology was fired by the collection of the first
sediment cores from Wray Bay, Windermere in 1940, which led
to increasing scientific interest in pollen, vegetation
history and the past impact of climate change and human
activities.
Married in 1942 to the Leicester botanist Tom Tutin, she
brought up four children and still found the time to become
one of the new generation of respected women researchers.
Lecturing in the Leicester University Botany Department in
the post-war years, she remained a frequent visitor to the
FBA and was on their Council from 1956 to 1967. On FBA staff
as Principal Scientific Officer until 1987, she then worked
(from Leicester) with a small multidisciplinary group on
various physical and biological aspects of palaeolimnology,
sediment chemistry, pollen and diatoms, using cores obtained
with the special compressed-air corers developed by the
FBA's chemist F.J.H. Mackereth to pursue investigations of
vegetation history.
Tutin was a pioneer in the study of pollen in sediments
collected from open waters rather rather than infilled lakes
or peats. Her early research into lake and catchment history
since deglaciation also explored the different records in
the English Lake District tarns in relation to altitude,
following the interest of the climatologist Gordon Manley in
the snowline limit during the final glaciation of the
Younger Dryas period. Co-operation with the local Brathay
Exploration Group at Ambleside led them to survey and chart
the high-level tarns she was studying and later enabled her
to visit glaciated areas in Norway to seek present-day
analogues. In 1970 she and I were among the first women to
join Brathay expeditions.
Tutin's work also extended to cover many of the lochs of
north-west Scotland for suitable comparison and the
extension of ideas. These field trips were memorable and I
recall her careful answer to a local who assumed that tree
remains in the nearby peats (4,000 years old) were from
forests in his grandfather's time.
Tutin chose her sampling sites to answer scientific
questions about the post-glacial changes in lakes and their
catchments and was keen on any improvements to methods of
interpretation and chronology.
As radio-carbon dating of sediment horizons and vegetation
changes became easier to obtain, with the advent of the
Scottish Research Reactor Centre at East Kilbride, she began
using quantitative methods to improve understanding of
pollen records of the whole timescale in lake sediments -
firstly in collaboration with Russell Coope to provide an
improved stratigraphy for the late-glacial (the Windermere
Interstadial) and then with Har-well scientists on
radioisotopic dating in order to date shorter term events in
the recent sediments related to human influence. An
important result was to quantify the range of sedimentation
rates in relation to W.H. Pearsall's ordering of the major
Cumbrian lakes from nutrient-poor (Wastwater) to
nutrient-rich (Esthwaite Water).
Archaeological evidence of man's ancient industry in the
area also inspired studies of human impact on the catchment;
from the first tree clearances through changes in
agriculture, other industries and the population expansion,
all contributing to the enrichment of lowland lakes and
acidification of upland ones.
Tutin was a well-read scientist; her complete recall of
detail always impressed me and thankfully she retained this
throughout her life. Rigorous in her questioning of both the
data and reasoning (too rigorous for some of us), she always
followed the dictum that one should go and examine the real
material rather than endlessly theorising about what "might
have been".
As well as the many first-class publications and
contributions to scientific meetings around the world, she
wrote, as Winifred Pennington, The History of the British
Vegetation (1969), and produced a volume in the classic New
Naturalist series, The Lake District: a landscape history
(1973), using the original notes left by Pearsall at his
death as well as her own detailed knowledge. To complete the
cycle, she coauthored the publication of those depth charts
of the Cumbrian tarns, which appeared in 2003 as Tarns of
the Central Lake District: depth surveys and their
environmental context.
She continued her writing in retirement. One loss to science
is that she felt that the revision of her book The History
of the British Vegetation was beyond her, due to the speed
of scientific advances, and was never finished, despite the
support of colleagues. Her name remains associated with
important advances in the study of palaeoe-cology and she
will be missed by those who knew her and her work and try to
follow her scientific standards.
Although always busy, Winifred Tutin was generous with her
time and her homes always provided a welcome to her many
colleagues from around the world. Her final years were spent
very happily in Kingsclere, Hampshire.
Winifred Pennington, botanist, palynologist, ecologist and
palaeoecologist: born Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire 8
October 1915; researcher, Freshwater Biological Association
1940-45, Principal Scientific Officer 1967-81; Demonstrator
and Special Lecturer in Botany, Leicester University
1947-67, Honorary Reader 1971-79, Honorary Professor
1980-2007; FRS 1979; married 1942 Thomas Tutin (died 1987;
one son, three daughters); died Basingstoke, Hampshire 1 May
2007.