UNB Libraries would like to extend sincere congratulations to Dr. C. Mary Young on having been awarded an honorary D.Sc. from the University of New Brunswick at the 187th Encaenia on May 18th, 2016.
Watch the video below to see the honorary degree conferred on Dr. C. Mary Young and to hear her address to the 2016 graduating classes of Biology and Nursing.
Dr. Young has a bachelor of science degree in zoology and botany from Bristol University with honours and a PhD from London University. She also studied at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where she researched the resistance of insects to insecticides, supported by the Medical Research Council. In 1953, she received a Fulbright travel fellowship to visit laboratories involved in insect resistance studies in the eastern United States.
In 1975, Dr. Young began volunteering in the Connell Memorial Herbarium at UNB, a museum that houses over 60,000 scientific specimens of plants, mostly collected in New Brunswick. She is the herbarium’s most longstanding volunteer and has volunteered countless hours in helping to curate, map and catalogue the collections. In 1987, Dr. Young became one of the founders and guiding figures of the Nature Trust of New Brunswick.
Last year, UNB Libraries published Dr. Young’s study Nature’s Bounty: Four Centuries of Plant Exploration in New Brunswick. The publication is significant in its contribution both to the history of plants in New Brunswick and to the history of UNB.
“Just like the scholars and scientists that she highlights in her book, Mary exemplifies the time-honoured tradition of a scientist and scholar with a broad range of expertise that extends well beyond the discipline that she devoted her career to. Mary’s academic training and career focused on entomology, but she has become a very knowledgeable botanist, both in the field and in the laboratory. Her scientific expertise and her love of botany are clearly evident in her botanical illustrations that accompany this book; these are not only accurate but beautiful.”
~Dr. James Goltz, from the Foreword
