Sidnie Manton


Sidnie Milana Manton, FLS FRS was a 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. Her sister was the botanist Professor Irene Manton FRS. 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.

Career

Manton joined Cambridge University and worked on the evolution of the arthropods, publishing "The Arthropoda: Habits, Functional Morphology and Evolution" in 1977.
She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in March 1948.
Manton died on 2 January 1979. Her archives are held at the Natural History Museum.
In 1992, the Manton crater on Venus was named after Sidnie Manton and her sister Irene Manton. In 2018 the British Ecological Society and the Journal of Animal Ecology inaugurated the Sidnie Manton Award for early career ecologists.

Personal life

Manton married John Philip Harding in 1937. They had one son and one daughter.