Annie Lorrain Smith

Annie Lorrain Smith (23 October 1854 – 7 September 1937) was a British lichenologist whose Lichens (1921) was an essential textbook for several decades. She was also a mycologist and founder member of the British Mycological Society, where she served as president for two terms.

Early life and education

Though born in Liverpool, she lived with her family in rural Dumfriesshire where her father Walter was Free Church of Scotland minister in Half Morton parish a few miles north of Gretna Green. Her mother was Annie Lorrain née Brown. She had several talented siblings, including the pathologist, Professor James Lorrain Smith.

After school in Edinburgh she went abroad to study French and German, and then worked as a governess. She moved to London, started studying botany in about 1878 went to classes at the Royal College of Science taught by D. H. Scott.

Career

Scott found work for Lorrain-Smith at the Natural History Museum to curate Anton de Bary's collection of slides of microscopical fungi, but she had to be paid from a special fund because women could not officially be employed there. She soon was responsible for identifying most of the fungi which arrived to the museum. She identified and reported on newly collected fungi, arriving from abroad as well as from the UK, and in total worked in the museum's cryptogamic herbarium from 1892 until 1933. She published various papers from 1895 to 1920.

Smith led a lichen survey of Clare Island, which was outside Clew Bay in Ireland, in 1910 and 1911. The Clare Island Survey involved not only Irish but also several European scientists who were all looking at different aspects of the island's natural history. The team were credited with the first project aimed at characterising a particular biogeographic area. In 1921 Smith wrote the illustrated Handbook of British Lichens which was a key to all known British lichens. In the same year Lichens was published and was quickly established as a classic text.

The standard author abbreviation A.L.Sm. is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.