Olive Mary Hilliard, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Olive Mary Hilliard

South African botanist

Date of Birth: 04-Jul-1925

Place of Birth: Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Date of Death: 04-Jan-2017

Profession: taxonomist, botanist

Nationality: South Africa

Zodiac Sign: Cancer

Olive Mary Hilliard (née Hillary) (4 July 1925 Durban) is a noted South African botanist and taxonomist.
Hilliard authored 372 land plant species names, the fifth-highest number of such names authored by any female scientist.Hilliard attended Natal University in the years 1943-47 where she obtained an MSc and later a PhD.
She worked at the National Herbarium in Pretoria in 1947-48 and was a lecturer in botany at Natal University from 1954 to 1962.
In 1963 she became curator of the herbarium at Natal University and a research fellow.
Her special fields of interest were the flora of Natal and the taxonomy of Streptocarpus, Compositae and Scrophulariaceae.
In 1964 she formed a professional and personal collaboration with Brian Laurence Burtt (1913-2008) who played a large part in the revitalising of a moribund Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.
Their collaboration resulted in numerous papers and three books, Streptocarpus: an African Plant Study (1971), The Botany of the Southern Natal Drakensberg (1987), and Dierama: The Hairbells of Africa (1991).
Her collected specimens, mostly from the Natal Drakensberg and Malawi, number some 8 000 (of which 5 000 were collected with B.
L.
Burtt).
She is commemorated in Plectranthus hilliardiae Codd, Schizoglossum hilliardiae Kupicha, Cymbopappus hilliardiae B.Nord., Agalmyla hilliardiae D.J.Middleton & S.M.Scott and Helichrysum hilliardiae Wild.