Botanist Irene Manton, noted for her studies of ferns and algae, was born in Kensington, London. Her father was a dentist and her mother of French aristocratic descent. Manton entered Girton College, Cambridge, in 1923, but did not particularly enjoy the atmosphere or teaching at the university, where women were not yet fully accepted. She nevertheless obtained first class honours in the Natural Science Tripos and was inspired by E.B. Wilson's book The Cell in Developmental Inheritance to concentrate on cytology.

She went on to undertake postgraduate study under Otto Rosenberg at the Stockholm Botanical Institute in 1926, and returned to England to gain her PhD from Cambridge with a thesis on Cruciferae (Brassicaceae) chromosomes. In 1929 she was appointed an assistant lecturer at the university of Manchester. During her PhD studies Manton initially carried out her work at Cambridge, then moved to live with her parents in Kew and was based at the Jodrell Laboratory in the Royal Botanic Gardens. Before finishing her PhD she had moved to Manchester, where she spent more than 15 productive years.

In 1935 Manton visited Egypt with fellow researcher Barbara Colson. The pair had been invited to the Cotton Research Institute in Giza, where Manton saw for the first time slides prepared using the McClintock acetocarmine squash method for looking at pollen cells undergoing meiosis. She later used this technique herself. Around the same time, influenced by W.H. Lang and his work on Osmunda, her focus came to rest on ferns. She embarked on a hybridising programme, studied the structure of fern chromosomes and made several collecting trips to continental Europe prior to the outbreak of the Second World War.

Manton remained in Manchester through the war years, with 1945 bringing personal tragedy as both her parents died. She also fell out badly with her sister Sidnie, who had been disinherited over her choice of spouse. Further changes were afoot for Manton as she had been appointed Chair of Botany at the University of Leeds, where she moved in 1946, taking with her a young personal assistant from Manchester, Bryan Clarke. The pair later collaborated on a series of papers.

Manton spent the rest of her career in Leeds, where she was the first female professor and the first female department head. She was disappointed that the department and its buildings were in decline, but firmly stated the case for their improvement and helped with the establishment of an experimental garden a mile from the university campus.

At Leeds, Manton carried out much research relying on ultraviolet and electron microscopy, especially concentrating on algal structure as well as continuing with fern cytology. In her lifetime she completed 170 scientific papers, one book and many other articles. The book, Problems of Cytology and Evolution in the Pteridophyta (1950), confirmed her reputation as an authority on the subject. Her work on marine flagellates and their remarkable structures, revealed through electron microscopy, was also much admired. To support her algal studies she made numerous arduous journeys to locations from the Arctic to South Africa to collect specimens, and discovered a great many new species.

Manton received the Linnean Medal (shared with Ethelwynn Trewavas) in the year of her retirement, 1969, and served as the first female president of the Linnean Society in 1973-1976. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1961. The Linnean Society established the annual Irene Manton Prize for the best dissertation in botany in 1990. In her spare time Manton took great interest in archaeology and art, both ancient and modern, and especially oriental works. She left her collection of paintings to Leeds University. The Manton Crater on Venus is named jointly after Irene and Sidnie Manton (who had also been elected to the Royal Society for her work as an entomologist).

Sources:
R.D. Preston, 1990, "Irene Manton. 17 April 1904-13 May 1988", Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 35: 249-261
R.D. Preston, 2004, "Manton, Irene (1904-1988)", rev. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn:
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/40037, accessed 23 January 2012
B. Leadbetter, 2004, "Irene Manton: A Biography (1905-1988)", The Linnean, 5.