Carmel Humphries
| Carmel Humphries | |
|---|---|
Carmel Humphries and Michael Tierney, 1957
|
|
| Born |
3 June 1909 Waterford, County Waterford, Ireland |
| Died | 7 March 1986 (aged 76) Rathmines, Dublin |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Known for | work on Irish Chironomidae |
| Scientific career | |
| Influences | Winifred Frost, T. T. Macan |
| Influenced | John Hearn, Dr Tom Hayden, Dr Jim Ryan, Dr Martin O'Grady |
Carmel Humphries MRIA B.Sc. M.Sc. PhD D.Sc. (3 June 1909 – 7 March 1986) was an Irish zoologist, specialist in fresh water Chironomidae. She was the first female professor of zoology and head of department in Ireland, and devised a technique for the identification of chironomid flies that is still employed today.
Carmel Frances Humphries was born in Waterford on 3 June 1909, to engineer William Francis, and Annie Humphries (née Palmer). She was one of five children, sisters Annie (married Frank Kane) and Martha, and brothers William Francis (married Nancy Russell), and Alban.
Humphries was first educated at the Ursuline convent, Waterford, and the at Loreto College, St Stephen's Green, Dublin. She entered University College Dublin (UCD) in 1929 to study science. During the course of her undergraduate study, Humphries won numerous scholarships, graduating in 1932 with an honours B.Sc. in botany and zoology. She went on to gain an M.Sc. and H.Dip.Ed. in zoology and education in 1933, going on to win a travelling scholarship in zoology with National University of Ireland (NUI) the same year. Humphries had developed an interest in pursuing a career in limnology (the study of lakes) rather than teaching, which she then studied abroad.
Humphries worked with Winifred Frost, T. T. Macan and H. P. Moon at the Freshwater biological station at Windermere in England from 1934 to 1936, focusing on the Benthic zone fauna in the lakes of Cumbria. Her work looked at the taxonomy of the larval and pupal stages of Chironomidae (non-biting midges or chironomids), resulting in a publication in the Journal of Animal Ecology in 1936. Humphries continued her study of chironomids at the Hydrobiologische Anstalt (later the Max-Planck-Institut für Limnologie) at Plön from 1936 to 1938, working with August Thienemann. Thienemann was a co-founder of the International Society of Limnology, and he was influential in Humphries undertaking the first comprehensive study of community composition and emergence periods of the Chironomidae of the Großer Plöner See. This group are deemed particularly difficult to identify or "taxonomically challenging". The results of this study were published in 1937 and 1938. She developed a method for the identification of Chironomidae by examining the microscopic skin the adult fly sheds when emerging from the pupa.
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