Miss Ethel Sargant, F.L.S. 
THEL SARGANT was bom in 1863, and was the third daughter of 
-1 1 1 Henry Sargant, barrister-at-law. She was educated at the North 
London Collegiate School, under Miss Buss, and at Girton College, Cam¬ 
bridge, where she took Parts I and II of the Natural Science Tripos in 1884 
and 1886. 1 She came to Kew in October, 1892, and it was here that her 
career as a botanical investigator began. From 1893 until the death of her 
mother in 1912 she lived at home, and for some years was able to give most 
of her time to research work in her own laboratory. Later, her devotion to 
an invalid sister and to her mother left her little opportunity for continuous 
work. In 1912 she took the Old Rectory at Girton, where she spent the 
~/ ; Gf3t years of her life in surroundings which were especially congenial to her. 
She died at Sidmouth, after a short illness, on January 16, 1918. 
By her premature decease, English botany loses one of its ablest and 
most devoted students, who had accomplished much, and would doubtless 
have accomplished still more, if life had been prolonged. 
When Miss Sargant came to the Jodrell Laboratory in 1892 her 
exceptional ability in research work at once showed itself. Her first 
published paper (1893) was a joint one with the present writer, on the 
pitchers of Dischidia Rafflesiana , chiefly concerned with the physiological 
anatomy of these organs. 
But while at Kew a more characteristic line of work was started—the 
investigation of the nucleus. For some time, both at Kew and afterwards 
in the very efficient laboratory which she had built at her home, Miss Sargant 
engaged with great perseverance in the search for centrosomes; their 
presence in the higher plants was then one of the burning questions of 
cytology. Like other observers, she was unable to confirm Guignard’s 
conclusions. Her publications on cytological subjects relate to the formation 
of the nuclei concerned in reproduction. Her chief results are embodied in 
two papers in the ‘Annals of Botany ’ on the formation of the sexual nuclei in 
Lilium Martagon —the first on oogenesis, the second on spermatogenesis. 
She was one of those who contributed to the proof of the striking agreement 
in these fundamental processes between animals and plants. 
Incidentally to her own researches Miss Sargant was able to confirm 
the important discovery, by the Russian botanist Nawaschin, of double 
1 The writer is indebted to Miss Sargant’s brother, Mr. W. L. Sargant, for many particulars 
of her life. 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. XXXII. No. CXXVI. April, 1918.] 
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