Monica Taylor

(Sister) Monica Taylor (1877 – 1968) was an English protozoologist. After a struggle to pursue higher education as a nun of the Order of Notre Dame de Namur, and being arrested during World War II on suspicion of being a German parachutist in disguise, she received several honours for her work in the field of amoebic zoology.

Early life She was born on 1 November 1877 in St Helens, Lancashire to science teacher Joseph Taylor and his wife Agnes, née Picton. Her father, her industrial chemist uncle, and her cousin, the chemist Hugh Stott Taylor, are cited as influences on her interest in science.

In the late 1890s she attended Mount Pleasant College, Liverpool, a teacher training college founded by the Sisters of Notre Dame. After the intervention of biologist John Graham Kerr, who was Regius Professor of Natural History at Glasgow at the time, she was finally allowed to attend lectures at Glasgow, accompanied by her chaperone and, allegedly, separated from the other students by a curtain.

Taylor worked especially on amoebae and polyploidy, but also on entomology.

In 1952 she served as Vice-President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 1954 – 7, as Vice-President of the Royal Society of Glasgow.