Anna McClean Bidder was the daughter of Marion Greenwood Bidder, one of the earliest independent women scientific researchers in Cambridge (you can see her college degree certificate elsewhere in the exhibition). Anna studied Zoology at Newnham, and completed her PhD on the functional morphology of cephalopods (squids and octopuses) in 1934 (while simultaneously having to manage her family’s textile business after the deaths of her mother and uncle). In the course of career she served on the Councils of the Marine Biological Association, the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Linnean Society, which made her a Fellow Honoris Causa in 1991. She was Curator of Malacology in the Museum of Zoology from 1963 to 1970. In 1951, Bidder was one of the three founder members of the Dining Group (made up of female academics who were not Fellows at colleges) who lobbied the University to create a new college for women. When Lucy Cavendish College was eventually established in 1965, Bidder served as its first President.
