stella turk 

Environment, Science & Engineering, Community &Voluntary Action, Education & Learning  

 1925 - 2017 

Suggested by John Macadam

“Stella and her husband, Dr. Frank Turk, founded the Cornish Biological Records Unit (CBRU) at the University of Exeter’s Institute of Cornish Studies in Redruth, which was later incorporated in the Cornwall Wildlife Trust’s (CWT) records section (now ERCCIS - Environmental Records Centre for Cornwall & the Isles of Scilly). She was particularly interested in marine life, being an official national recorder for marine molluscs. She was also the Strandings Recorder for the CBRU. Stella received the Stamford Raffles Award of the Zoological Society of London in 1979, an honorary MSc from Exeter University in 1980, and an MBE in 2003.  

Professionally I’m a geologist but am also interested in most aspects of wildlife, submitting many records to ERCCIS. Stella was always most helpful when I brought a strange (well, strange to me!) (dead!) specimen in - she either told me then and there what it was and something about it or else she did some research and told me what it was, e.g. 5th record for Cornwall: in one case the insect must have hitched a ride in some foreign produce! She was interested in the whole of nature, biotic and abiotic.  

Stella had a major input into the Red Data Book for Cornwall. She also wrote a nature column for the 'West Briton'. After her husband died it is said that her contributions were rather better recognised. It is fitting that a high quality new building on the Penryn Campus is named the 'Stella Turk Building' - appropriately shared by geologists and ecologists. Stella is dead, after a long life well-lived, so I cannot ask her permission to submit this. She was very quiet and modest, but I think she'd be chuffed!"  

wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Turk