Sidnie Milana Manton

Sidnie Milana Manton (4 May 1902 – 2 January 1979) was an influential British zoologist. She is known for making advances in the field of functional morphology. She is regarded as being one of the most outstanding zoologists of the twentieth century.

Early life Sidnie Milana Manton was born in Kensington, London the daughter of a descendant of French aristocracy and a dentist. She was educated at the Froebel Demonstration School and at St. Paul's Girls' School before joining Girton College, Cambridge in 1921. While at Girton College she was awarded the Montifiore Prize in 1925. She came top of the class list, but was not awarded the prize that that position usually brings, because women were not at that time officially members of Cambridge University.

Career Manton initially worked as an Alfred Yarrow Research Student at Girton College, Cambridge, and later was the first woman to receive a Doctor of Science (ScD) title from Cambridge University and the first woman to hold the post of Demonstrator in Comparative Anatomy at Cambridge University. and a collection of her letters and Diaries were published in 2020.

Honours and awards She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in March 1948, one of the first women to receive this honour. She was also a Fellow of the Linnean Society, and was awarded a Gold Medal by the Linnean Society in 1963. In 1968, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Lund in 1968. In 2018 the British Ecological Society and the Journal of Animal Ecology inaugurated the Sidnie Manton Award for early career ecologists.

Personal life Manton's sister was the botanist Professor Irene Manton FRS. Manton married John Philip Harding in 1937. They had one son and one daughter.