Martha Allen Sherwood


Martha Allen Sherwood was an American lichenologist and mycologist. She circumscribed the genus Xerotrema with Brian John Coppins and the genus Marthamyces is named after her.

Biography

Sherwood was born on November 8, 1948 in Eugene, Oregon, United States. Her parents were University of Oregon professors John Sherwood and Irma Sherwood.
Sherwood studied at the University of Oregon and went on a field expedition to Guadeloupe in the French West Indies while a student. She achieved her PhD at Cornell University in 1977, working under Richard Korf. Her thesis work was on ostropalean fungi, which was published in the scientific journal Mycotaxon. As a post-doctoral position, Sherwood worked at the Farlow Herbarium of Cryptogamic Botany at Harvard University and with local amateur lichenologists.In 1979 she issued the exsiccata Phacidiales exsiccati.
Sherwood was a member of the Mycological Society of America and edited the Society's journal newsletter from January 1979 to August 1980. Sherwood circumscribed the genus of Xerotrema with Brian John Coppins in 1980. The genus Marthamyces is named after her.
Sherwood moved to England, where she worked at the University of Liverpool and contributed to the book The British Ascomycotina. An Annotated Checklist. After returning to the United States, Sherwood married biologist and organic farmer Lawrence Herbert Pike and attended the Central Lutheran Church in Eugene, Oregon.
Sherwood worked in the Department of Biology at the University of Oregon. She collaborated with palaeobotanist Jane Gray on research about fossil fungi, interpreting fossilised faecal pellets containing fungal hyphae as implying the existence of a fungivorous microarthropod.
Sherwood died on October 19, 2020 in Eugene, Oregon, aged 71, after suffering from a stroke.

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