Lucy Evelyn Cheesman, or Evelyn Cheesman as she is more commonly known, was quite a woman.
Her legacy includes having four species of frog and a moth skink named in her honour.
Cheesman was born in 1881 — the same year as the Natural History Museum opened — interesting, as she later donated over 70,000 specimens to the museum, mainly insects and plants gathered from her travels round the world. She specialised in the South Pacific region.
Among her achievements are an OBE for services to science and her position as the first female curator at London Zoo.
More controversially, she often travelled alone on her research trips, in regions of the world where even men were reluctant to go solo. Her last expedition, to Vanuatu, took place after she had a hip replacement.
Cheesman also found time to write 16 books, and in 2013 Kew Gardens credited her with discovering a previously unidentified species of orchid.
Evelyn Cheesman's life
