Nelly Hooper Ludbrook

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Nelly Hooper Ludbrook MBE (1907–1995) was an Australian geologist and palaeontologist. She was born Nell Hooper Woods in Yorketown, South Australia, on 14 June 1907. She studied at the University of Adelaide, earning a BA in 1928 and a teaching diploma because she hadn’t taken enough science prerequisites for a science degree. She studied geology and mathematics and worked on the fossil mollusc collection of Sir Joseph Verco, while also pursuing a Master’s degree. While teaching at Mount Barker High School, she wrote a paper on Cainozoic molluscs that won the Tate Memorial Medal in 1931.

In 1935 she married Wallis Verco Ludbrook and the couple moved to Canberra. There, Irene Crespin employed Nell as an Assistant Geologist from 1942 to 1949, working on mineral statistics for the war effort. In 1950 Nell went to England to study molluscs at the Imperial College of Science and the British Museum (Natural History). Her husband died in 1951, and she stayed in England to complete a PhD on Pliocene molluscs of the Adelaide plains at the University of London, graduating in 1952.

Nell returned to Australia and became Technical Information Officer for the South Australian Department of Mines. She was promoted to palaeontologist in 1957 and later to senior palaeontologist, working in that role until her retirement in 1967. She was the Australian correspondent for Micropalaeontology from 1962 to 1966. After retirement, she worked as a palaeontology consultant for the South Australian Department of Mines and described Tertiary molluscan fauna. She also wrote Handbooks of the Flora and Fauna of South Australia and a Guide to the Geology and Mineral Resources of South Australia.

Nell Ludbrook died in 1995. She is remembered for showing how palaeontology can be useful to the resources industry. A zone, P. ludbrookiae, is named in her honour in the Eromanga and Surat basins, and seventeen fossil species were named after her. She published more than 70 papers and monographs. She was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1981 for service to science. The Geological Survey of South Australia named its fossil collection the Ludbrook Library in her honour. She was the first woman president of the Geological Society of Australia in 1968 and the first woman president of the Royal Society of South Australia in 1961, and she received the Sir Joseph Verco Medal in 1963.