Muriel Wheldale Onslow (1880-1932): Pioneer plant biochemist

Wheldale joined William Bateson’s research group at Cambridge University in 1903 after completing the Natural Sciences Tripos with First Class Honours. Her research on the inheritance of flower colour in Antirrhinum was to make her the most acclaimed of Bateson’s early researchers. She was one of only two genetics researchers in the first decade of the 20th century to perform plant breeding experiments combined with biochemical investigation of flower pigments, the anthocyanins. Wheldale held a studentship at the John Innes Horticultural Institution from 1911 to 1914 where, in addition to her laboratory work, she was prized as the Institution’s leading botanical artist. During this time she became one of the first women to be elected to the Biochemical Club. She resigned in 1914 to join the Biochemistry Department at Cambridge under Frederick Gowland Hopkins. In 1919 she married Huia Onslow.