Maria Wilman

Education

Wilman first matriculated at the Good Hope Seminary in Cape Town. Later, in 1885, she entered the University of Cambridge and was only the second South African woman to do so. She completed a natural science tripos in geology, mineralogy, and chemistry at Newnham College, Cambridge in 1888, and an MA in botany in 1895. However, women were not conferred formal degrees until the 1930s, so Wilman did not actually receive her MA from Cambridge until November 1931.

In 1939 she was granted an honorary doctorate in law from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

On the staff of the South African Museum

Wilman's museum career began when she returned to South Africa from England and worked as a volunteer in the Geology Department at the South African Museum in Cape Town. Because she did not have a formal degree and her father did not approve of her earning a salary, Wilman was unable to accept payment for her work at the museum. Nonetheless, she continued to work there in a volunteer capacity until 1902 when she was officially named an assistant in the Geology Department.

While at the South African Museum, Wilman worked with Louis Albert Péringuey. Péringuey's interest in the San people and culture allowed her to take several research trips to the Northern Cape and Zimbabwe.

In 1906 she undertook an important journey up to Kimberley, the Vryburg region and further north, collecting specimens, and amassing data on rock engravings which was the start of a project culminating nearly three decades later in her publication Rock engravings of Griqualand West and Bechuanaland (1933), published in Cambridge. It remained the standard text on rock art in South Africa for nearly five decades.

Wilman continued to study rock art, as well as the culture of the San and Khoikhoi peoples for the rest of her life.

Director of the McGregor Museum in Kimberley

Wilman was appointed as the first Director of the newly founded McGregor Museum in Kimberley in 1908. She also founded the herbarium there in the same year and began to cultivate its collection of regional plant life, which includes important type specimens from Northern Cape. She fostered relationships with local collectors on specimens, like Constance Georgina Adams, with whom she developed a long term friendship.

Her botanical work at the McGregor led to her publication Preliminary Checklist of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of Griqualand West (1946). She also introduced mesquite and kurrajong trees to Kimberley and shared South African grass seeds with institutions and organisations in the United States. Some have attributed these grass species with resuscitating some of the Dust Bowl areas in the country, particular in the state of Texas.

Wilman stepped down from the directorship of the McGregor in 1947, but continued to work on her geology and botany studies there. She retired from the museum completely in 1953 and went to live in George. Wilman died there on 9 November 1957. She had never married.

Legacy

Several plant species have been named in her honour, including Wilman lovegrass (Eragrostis superb), Watsonia wilmaniae, Stapelia wilmaniae, Ruschia wilmaniae, Hereroa wilmaniae, and Nananthus wilmaniae.