of Magdalen College. While living in Headington and collaborating with her husband in research, she continued in close touch with Somerville, teaching and directing the studies of the botanists, an informal relationship recognized in the list of Lecturers from 1948-58. She was elected an Honorary Research Fellow of Somerville in 1966 and an Honorary Research Fellow of St. Hugh's in 1972. She served as a Curator of the Botanic Gardens from 1947 until 1958, when the Snows reluctantly decided to leave Oxford in search of a climate better suited to Robin's health. Finally they made their home at Vernet-les-Bains, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, where they continued their collaboration in research. From the very first Mary Pilkington stood out among her fellow undergraduates as possessing a highly individual and almost ultra-scientific mind. She was always searching for the relationship between cause and effect, and this not only in botany but in the wider field of life. I sometimes thought that she viewed the world as a giant research laboratory but this outlook was tempered by her compassion and solicitude for all living things. Very simple in her personal way of life, she was aboundingly generous towards 'the causes which need assistance' and did much good by stealth not only by benefactions to her own and other universities but in quiet financial help and encouragement to many in need. In youth, Mary liked rock-climbing and until almost the end of her life she greatly enjoyed walking in mountains, a pleasure shared by her husband. Both she and Robin were interested in the scientific investigation of the paranormal and were members of the Society for Psychical Research. She read a good deal, particularly biography, and here again her interest was largely in cause and effect. 'How did this man or woman come to act in a particular way ?' Mary had all the good and solid virtues of her north-country upbringing. She possessed complete integrity and a strongly developed sense of duty. She was a forthright and outspoken person who did not suffer fools gladly but she was also a most charming and loyal companion and friend and all her many friends will feel the lack of her. E. N.
Rosemary Estelle Woolf The following tribute, written by the Principal of St. Hugh's appeared in The Times on Wednesday, 19 April 1978, and is here reprinted by permission. Ed. The death on 13 April of Rosemary Woolf has deprived Oxford of one of its outstanding medievalists. The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages remains the authoritative work on this subject, and several of the articles she produced between 1953 and 1976 have established themselves as classics. The English Mystery Plays and the work on Langland she was engaged on up to her death reveal the exceptional range of her scholarship. There was nothing of the narrow specialist in her warm and bold intellect. 45