Helen Holme Bancroft

Helen Holme Simmons FRS FLS (née Bancroft; 30 September 1887 – 2 October 1950), commonly known as Nellie Bancroft, was a British botanist and scientific illustrator famous for her work on plant systematics and the anatomy of both living and fossil plants.' She studied at the Derby Girl's Secondary School, and then pursued higher education at the University College Nottingham and then the University College London, earning a Bachelor of Science degree 1910. Bancroft was then trained at Newnham College as a research student from 1911 to 1914 and earned a Doctor of Science degree at the University of Cambridge in 1915. Among her work was notable papers on the anatomy of fossil plants from India and the systematics of extant cycads. She named numerous new species and genera of plants, such as the Triassic genus Rhexoxylon and several species of Monotes. Bancroft also helped illustrate the works of others, for instance illustrating Sir William Somerville's How a Tree Grows''.

Bancroft married Charles Eyres Simmons on 20 March 1939.