Mary Gunn

Mary Davidson Gunn (15 March 1899 – 31 August 1989) was a South African librarian and biographer who developed and expanded the Mary Gunn Library into one of the most important resources on botany and biodiversity in Africa.

Gunn was born in Kirriemuir in Scotland on the 15th of March 1899. Her father decided to emigrate with his family to South Africa after serving there in the Boer War. She was educated at the Gymnasium school and obtained employment as a clerk at the Division of Botany and Plant Pathology in Pretoria in September, 1916.

She was assigned the responsibility of maintaining and building up the library of the Division of Botany by Dr Pole-Evans.

Gunn specialised in two particular areas of research. She researched biographical information on early botanists and became an authority on old botanical literature.

With botanist Leslie Edward Wostall Codd, she co-authored Botanical Exploration of Southern Africa in 1981, a history of the country's plant collecting, collectors and early botanical illustrations. A follow up was published in 1985. She is known specialising in non-contemporary botanists. A student once asked her a question about a contemporary botanist to which she replied "...I only deal with dead botanists, either kill him off or ask Codd next door!"

The National Herbarium Library was renamed the Mary Gunn Library in her honour in 1970. In 1976 the Botanical Society of South Africa awarded Gunn the Harry Bolus Medal.