Gertrud Theiler

Who was Gertrud Theiler?

Gertrud Theiler was a South African parasitologist and teacher most noted for her work with nematodes and ticks.

Born on 11 September 1897 in Pretoria, South Africa, Theiler graduated from Pretoria Girls’ High School and spent a year at Rhodes University College in Grahamstown, South Africa, before transferring to South African College in Cape Town, where she graduated in 1918 with a Bachelor of Science degree. She went to Europe to undertake postgraduate work in helminthology at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, where she took her Doctor of Science degree in 1922. She then studied at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and the London School of Tropical Medicine, authoring four important scientific papers on research concerning the nematode parasites of South African equines.

She returned to South Africa in 1924 and taught biology for 17 years, the last two at Jeppe High School for Girls in Johannesburg. She then secured a lectureship at Huguenot College in Wellington, South Africa, where in 1935 she was appointed to a professorship in Zoology and Physiology. In 1939 she lectured at Rhodes University College, before accepting a research post in the entomology section at Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute, where she studied ticks for the following 25 years, becoming well known around the world in her field and counting among her colleagues such luminaries as Dr Jane Brotherton Walker and Dr. Harry Hoogstraal.