Rachel Ford Thompson

Rachel Ford Thompson (31 August 1856 – 9 December 1906) was an English botanist and temperance activist. She aided Frederick Janson Hanbury with his studies of Hieracium, and she contributed to F.A. Lees' Flora of West Yorkshire and Cardale Babington's Manual of British Botany, in which she developed "an entirely fresh account of the genus" Hieracium. Thompson was also an active member of the Women's Temperance Union. Her brother Sylvanus P. Thompson was a physics professor and electrical engineer.

Life Rachel Ford Thompson was born in York on 31 August 1856. She was the daughter of Quaker botanist Silvanus Thompson (1818–1881) and Bridget Tatham.

Thompson was a botanist and temperance activist. From 1882 to 1893, she studied flora in Yorkshire. She aided Frederick Janson Hanbury with his studies of Hieracium. She contributed to F.A. Lees' Flora of West Yorkshire, and Cardale Babington's Manual of British Botany, in which she developed "an entirely fresh account of the genus" Hieracium.

She was also an active member of the Women's Temperance Union. The other well-connected women botanists were Margaret Dawber (1859–1901), Frances Louisa Foord-Kelcey (1862–1914), Dorcas Martha Higgins (1856?–1920), Eliza Standerwick Gregory, Elizabeth Lomax, Charlotte Ellen Palmer (1830–1914), and Ida Mary Roper.