Joyce Lambert

Joyce Mildred Lambert (23 June 1916 – 4 May 2005) was a British botanist and ecologist. She is credited with proving that the Norfolk Broads were man-made.

Early life Joyce Lambert was born on 23 June 1916 at 50 Oakbank Grove, Herne Hill, London. She was the daughter of Loftus Sidney Lambert, clerk for an electrical supply company, and later estate agent, and his wife, Mildred Emma, née Barker. She was brought up in Brundall, Norfolk, and was educated at Norwich High School for Girls.

In 1939, Lambert graduated in botany from the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. After working as a schoolteacher in Norwich she was appointed lecturer in botany at Westfield College, London. The Norfolk naturalist A. E. (Ted) Ellis and the botanist A. R. Clapham (then at Oxford) who encouraged her in the 1940s to study the ecology of the fens bordering the River Yare in the Surlingham–Rockland St Mary area of Norfolk.

Personal life She was a life-long supporter of Norwich City football club. After her retirement in 1980 she returned to the house in Brundall (to the east of Norwich) that her grandfather had built in the 1920s. In the final three years of her life she moved to a nursing home, Oakwood House, in Old Watton Road, Colney, Norfolk. She died there on 4 May 2005 of bronchopneumonia. She never married.

Publications J.N. Jennings, J.M. Lambert (1951). Alluvial stratigraphy and vegetational succession in the region of the Bure valley broads. Journal of Ecology 39 (1): 116–148. . J.M. Lambert, J.N. Jennings, C.T. Smith, Charles Green, J.N. Hutchinson (1960). The Making of the Broads: a reconsideration of their origin in the light of new evidence. London: Royal Geographical Society; J. Murray.