Helen P. Ramsay
Helen P. Ramsay is an Australian bryologist specialising in cytology and taxonomy.
Education and personal life
Helen Patricia Ramsay was born 2 September 1928. She received her doctorate on bryophyte genetics from the University of Sydney in 1966. By this time she was married to Frank and they had 3 children together.Botanical career
In 1966 she had a Leverhulme postdoctoral fellowship at Bangor University, Wales, working on meiotic cell division in bryophytes in the laboratory of Professor Paul Richards. At the time, the department was one of the leaders in bryology research in the UK. In 1968 she was appointed as a tutor in botany, University of New South Wales, and was later promoted to senior lecturer. She remained there until she retired in 1984. However, her active fieldwork of collecting and recording moss continued. From 1985 until the early 2000s she substantially extended the collection in the National Herbarium of New South Wales of bryophytes from the Blue Mountains.Her research focused on cytology, taxonomy and distribution checklists, particularly of the moss families Bryaceae, Sematophyllaceae and Macromitrium. She recorded distributions of the mosses of New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and Lord Howe Island as well as carefully cataloguing and storing the herbarium material.
Ramsay was co-editor of the Australasian Bryological Newsletter from 1979 until 1991.
Publications
Ramsay was the author of more than 65 scientific publications and book chapters. These included:- Ramsay, H., 'History of research on Australian mosses' in Flora of Australia volume 51, McCarthy, P. M., ed., pp. 1-19.
- Ramsay H.P. Australian Mosses – New chromosome numbers and compilation of chromosome data. Telopea 13 : 577-619.
- Ramsay, H.P., Schofield, W.B., & Tan, B.C. 2002. The genus Taxithelium in Australia. Aust. Syst. Bot., 15 : 683-596
- Ramsay, H.P., Streimann, H., & Vitt, D.H. 1995. Cytological studies on mosses from Papua New Guinea I. Introduction and the family Orthotrichaceae. Tropical Bryology 11: 151-160
- Ramsay, H.P. Cytological and sexual characteristics of the moss Dicranoloma Ren. Monographs in Systematic Botany 11: 93-110
- Ramsay, H., Telopea, 2 455-533
- Ramsay, H.P. Cytological studies of Australian mosses. Aust. J. Bot., 22 : 293-348
- Ramsay, H.P. Cytological studies of mosses from the British Isles. Bot. J. Linn. Soc. 62: 85-121
- Ramsay, H.P. Sex chromosomes in Macromitrium. Bryologist 69: 293-311