Australian Dictionary of Biography

Associate Professor Hindmarsh, c.1977

Uniken no. 20 of 1977, p.3

Mary Maclean Hindmarsh (1921–2000), botanist, was born on 21 July 1921 at Lismore, New South Wales, eldest of four daughters of New South Wales-born parents James George Hindmarsh, auctioneer, and his wife Elsie May, neé Exton. Following the death of Elsie May in 1935, the sisters were raised by their paternal grandmother, Isabella Mary Hindmarsh, a much-admired, civic-minded resident of Lismore. Educated at Lismore Rural and Lismore High schools, Mary was active in the Junior Red Cross and a keen participant in local events, performing in recitals and excelling at debating. She developed an interest in history and botany and, encouraged by her grandmother, in 1939 enrolled at New England University College, Armidale, then under the umbrella of the University of Sydney (BSc, 1943; PhD, 1955); she majored in botany and geology.

Moving to Sydney, Hindmarsh taught for a year at Ascham School, a private girls’ school, then worked part time as a demonstrator in botany at the University of Sydney, before taking a full-time position as a tutor and demonstrator to ex-service personnel studying through the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme. She was awarded a Linnean Macleay fellowship in 1949, enabling her to undertake research for a PhD into cellular changes in onion roots caused by environmental contaminants such as sulphanilamides, thus beginning a specialisation in cytology. In 1953 she travelled to London to undertake postdoctoral research on cell division at the Chester Beatty Research Institute, Royal Cancer Hospital. While abroad, she took the opportunity to tour the continent for ten weeks with two women friends.

Returning to Sydney in 1954, Hindmarsh took up a position as a lecturer in botany at New South Wales University of Technology, Ultimo—later the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Kensington—where she was the only botanist. She progressed to senior lecturer and head of the botany department in 1959 and associate professor in 1972, retiring at the end of 1978. During her twenty-three years at the university, she played a major role in developing the discipline of botany there. Around 1964, with Donald Blaxell and Alec Wood, she started a herbarium—still in existence in 2024—that became an internationally registered collection of many thousands of specimens for teaching and research.

After retirement Hindmarsh continued to research the plants she had collected over the years, and worked on a project preparing a key to identifying rainforest species found south of the Macleay River watershed. She undertook this project with her long-term colleague John Waterhouse, a senior lecturer in botany and the director of the herbarium at the university, whom she had met when they were both demonstrators at the University of Sydney in the 1940s. After his death in 1983 she was unable to undertake the remainder of the fieldwork.

A life member of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, which she had joined as a graduate in 1943, Hindmarsh was a member of its council from 1970 to 1974 and donated liberally to its Joyce W. Vickery Research Fund, supporting research in biological science. She was a foundation member of the Friends of the Royal Botanic Gardens. Outside her botanical interests, she appreciated music, opera, and ballet; wood carving and cabinet-making; and croquet. Qualified as a referee and coach in that sport, she was a life member of the Mosman Croquet Club.

Since her early thirties, Hindmarsh had suffered from systemic lupus erythematosus, a debilitating autoimmune condition, and in her final two years she became ill with motor neurone disease. ‘A positive and independent person,’ she was determined not to let her growing debility rule her life: ‘when she could no longer use her woodworking tools or hold a croquet mallet, she learned to play bridge,’ and when she became unable to grasp a pen, ‘she bought a computer and learned to communicate through e-mail’ (Linn S’O’C’ News 2000, 2). She died on 10 April 2000 at St Leonards, and was cremated; she had never married. Robert King, a former head of the school of biological science at UNSW, observed that she would ‘be remembered as a pioneering botanist and academic, a conscientious and caring teacher, a fair and just administrator, and someone who made a contribution to women in science, especially at UNSW’ (Uniken 2000, 14).