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Grace Waterhouse

British botanist (1906-1996)

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ21612271 ↗
Source-derived summary

Grace Marion Waterhouse (23 July 1906 – 9 May 1996) was a British mycologist who worked for the International Mycological Institute in Kew for 20 years. She was an expert on the identification and taxonomy of Phytophthora plant pathogens. She gathered a large collection of Phytophthora cultures, and published two seminal works on the genus: a key to the species and a compilation of species descriptions.

Early life and education

Grace Waterhouse was born in South West London in 1906 to Bertram and Jane Waterhouse and was the youngest of three children. She had two brothers. She attended the Royal Holloway, University of London from 1924 to 1927 where she studied botany. After graduation, she worked in the Botany Department of Royal Holloway College for 12 years. Waterhouse was a student and collaborator of mycologist Elizabeth Marianne Blackwell (1889-1973); through her she became interested in the Phytophthora. In 1939, Waterhouse was awarded a Master's degree for her work on them. From 1937 to 1941, she studied zoology at Birkbeck College.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Grace Waterhouse” is british botanist (1906-1996). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Grace, Waterhouse and British, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1906, 1996, 1924, 1927—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1906-01-01. For this dossier, Grace, Waterhouse and British is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “british botanist (1906-1996)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q21612271. VIAF identifies the subject as 165421366. The Library of Congress control number is n82032764. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1906, 1996, 1924 and 1927.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Grace Waterhouse” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.