About Entomologist Margaret Rae MacKay

Margaret MacKay is a highly accomplished entomologist. She discovered the first positive evidence that lepidoptera (moths) existed more than seventy-two million years ago.  She was the first woman to receive a master's degree in entomology from the University of Saskatchewan in 1938.

Previous publications by MacKay include her memoirs: “The Life of a Female Drifter: An Entomologist Remembers”.  The publisher describes her memoirs as follows:

“Determined. Adventurous. Dynamic. Not words you normally associate with someone who studies bugs, but then Margaret Rae MacKay was no ordinary woman, as she so delightfully recounts in her recently published memoirs, The Life of a Female Drifter: An Entomologist Remembers. After receiving a master's degree in entomology from the University of Saskatchewan - a rare achievement for women in 1938 - Margaret traveled to London, England, to take up a position as an entomological artist at the venerable British Museum.

Although war loomed on the horizon, Margaret took advantage of the opportunities - both professional and social - that come with living in one of the world's great cities and experienced life to the fullest. The Blitz, however, brought this enjoyable period to an end and her return to Canada, where she began a career in forest entomology with the federal Department of Agriculture.

Over the next three decades, she earned the respect of her colleagues, and overcame some of the prejudices of her times, with postings in British Columbia and Ottawa, and field study throughout North America. By the time of her retirement in the 1970s, she had achieved international renown as an artist and a scientist in the male-dominated field of entomology, specializing in moths.

The Life of a Female Drifter: An Entomologist Remembers is a spirited account of the life of Margaret Rae MacKay, a woman with an almost unquenchable thirst for life and new experiences.

While these traits come through in every word she writes and every line she draws, her story also reminds us that many of those women who came of age between the two world wars created lives for themselves that would be the envy of many today. Her life, in turn, illustrates the best that the twentieth century had to offer”.

Previous work by Margaret Rae MacKay includes numerous entomological publications, many of which are listed under Memoirs and Papers.

The course of scientific discovery is often hindered by social environment and prejudices.  Read Margaret's "My Scientific Career in Entomology - The Dark Side". This work describes her memories of a most unexpected and strange but common breed of scientist, one whose ambition, jealousy, and pettiness are often unrestrained.

Margaret's experience as a scientific editor and long-time scientist suggests that the best, the excellent, research is produced by conscientious, comparatively hard-working individuals who do not seek the limelight, and by the occasional brilliant original thinker who comes on to the scene infrequently.