Winifred Elsie Brenchley

Winifred Elsie Brenchley (1883 to 1953) was an English agricultural botanist at the Rothamsted Experimental Station and the first woman in the United Kingdom to enter agricultural science. Born in London, she studied at Swanley Horticultural College and University College London, took a Doctor of Science in 1911 with a thesis on the strength and development of the wheat grain, and was taken to Rothamsted by a Gilchrist Scholarship, becoming head of its Botany Department until she retired at 65. With Katherine Warington she demonstrated that boron is an essential plant micronutrient. She wrote Inorganic Plant Poisons and Stimulants, Weeds of Farm Land, the first comprehensive scientific study of weeds in the United Kingdom, and Manuring of Grass Land for Hay, drawing on the Park Grass plots, and she received the OBE in 1948.