Annie Porter


Annie Porter, married name Fantham was an English zoologist and Honorary Parasitologist to the Zoological Society of London. She worked at the Quick Laboratory in Cambridge, and was head of parasitology at the South African Institute for Medical Research in Johannesburg. She also lectured at the University of Witwatersrand and McGill University in Canada. Porter was a fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa and the Zoological Society of London, and was awarded the South Africa Medal in 1927.

Life

Annie Porter was the daughter of Samuel Porter of Brighton. She was born on 20 February 1880 in Sussex, and grew up in Brighton. She earned a Bachelor of Science with honours in botany at the University College London in 1905, after which she moved to the Quick Laboratory in Cambridge, where she was an assistant in helminthology. In 1910 she was awarded a DSc for six parasitology papers. From 1914 to 1917, she was Beit Memorial Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. In 1915 she married fellow zoologist Harold Benjamin Fantham. Porter continued to use her maiden name for her publications after her marriage. In 1914 Porter and Fantham co-authored Some Minute Animal Parasites, for which Porter draw most of the fifty-six illustrations.
From 1917 to 1933, Porter was Head of the Department of Parasitology at the South African Institute for Medical Research in Johannesburg. She was also Senior Lecturer in Parasitology at the University of the Witwatersrand. From 1933 to 1938, she was a research associate in zoology at McGill University. Porter was president of the South African Geographical Society in 1924, and a fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa. She was awarded the South Africa Medal in 1927.
Porter moved to England after her husband died in October 1937. She was a fellow of the Zoological Society of London, and she was invited to the position of Honorary Parasitologist to the Society by Sir Julian Huxley. Porter died of diverticulitis and bronchopneumonia at St Pancras Hospital in London on 9 May 1963, and was buried at Mill Road Cemetery in Cambridge.

Works