August 5: Miriam Rothschild

One of the world’s great naturalists, Miriam Rothschild, was born on this date in 1908. An heiress of the Rothschild banking family, she never sought funding or academic degrees yet became a leading authority on insects, especially fleas and butterflies, and on wildflowers. Rothschild was the first person to analyze the flea’s jumping mechanism, and determined that butterflies’ bright colors warned of their toxicity and are mimicked by other species. During World War II, she worked on code-breaking and pressed for increased acceptance of Jewish German immigrants in the UK; at one point she housed 49 Jewish children at her family estate, Ashton Wold, where she lived her entire life. Other causes with which she was concerned were the legalization of homosexuality, vegetarianism, better treatment of laboratory animals, and childhood nutrition (she was the mother of six). She died at age 96 in 2005.

“Butterflies, they are like dream flowers, childhood dreams, which have broken loose from their stalks and escaped into the sunshine.” —Miriam Rothschild