Mary Davidson Gunn, botanical librarian and biographer, emigrated to South Africa with her parents, who settled in Pretoria. She received her schooling in the State Gymnasium (a high school in Pretoria) and in 1916 was appointed as clerical assistant in the Division of Botany and Plant Pathology (in the Department of Agriculture) headed by Dr I. B. Pole Evans*. Her duties were soon expanded to caring for the small collection of botanical books and she developed an intense interest in particularly old works. Though she had no formal library training she soon became an authority on early botanical literature, mainly by studying the catalogues of overseas booksellers. She acquired many valuable historical works for the library, including some journal series, despite financial constraints. Books that the library could not afford to buy were obtained through donations, largely through her persuasiveness. Meanwhile the many queries about botanical explorers raised by Dr Pole Evans led her into a second specialization, namely biographical research on early botanists. She published a number of tributes and notes on individual botanists, namely J. Burtt Davy (1940), A. E. Roupell (1951), E. M. Doidge (1967), E. P. Phillips (1969), J. W. Bews (1970), A. Dieterlen (1971), M. K. Dinter (1971), I. B. Pole Evans (1971), M. G. A. Henrici (1972) and J. Hutchinson (1973). She collected information from all over the world and eventually used most of it to compile her most ambitious work, Botanical exploration of southern Africa, an illustrated history of early botanical literature on the Cape flora and biographical accounts of the leading plant collectors and their activities in southern Africa, from the days of the East India Company until modern times (1981, with L. E. Codd). She also introduced and edited The Flora Capensis of Jakob and Johann Phillipp Breyne (1978, with E. du Plessis). Furthermore, she passed information that she had collected about various botanists on to other botanical historians, who incorporated it in their publications.
Gunn retired officially in 1954, but continued working in a temporary capacity until 1973. Thereafter she spent a few hours per week at the Division of Botany until a few years before her death. In 1957/8 volume 32 of The flowering plants of Africa was dedicated to her. Her highest honour was the dedication in 1969 of the Mary Gunn Library, a memorial to her for building up the library almost single-handedly. In 1976 she was awarded the Bolus Medal of the Botanical Society of South Africa for her outstanding contributions to botany in South Africa. Letters and documents relating to her work are held in the Strange Collection of the Johannesburg Public Library and in the South African Library in Cape Town.
