Helen Holme Bancroft was born in
Derby, England on 30 September 1887. She studied at the
Derby Girl's Secondary School, and then pursued higher education at the
University College Nottingham and then the
University College London, earning a
Bachelor of Science degree 1910. Bancroft was then trained at
Newnham College as a research student from 1911 to 1914 and earned a
Doctor of Science degree at the
University of Cambridge in 1915. Among her work was notable papers on the anatomy of fossil plants from India and the systematics of extant
cycads. She named numerous new species and genera of plants, such as the
Triassic genus
Rhexoxylon and several species of
Monotes. Bancroft also helped illustrate the works of others, for instance illustrating Sir
William Somerville's
How a Tree Grows (1927). Bancroft married Charles Eyres Simmons on 20 March 1939. Though she took his last name, becoming Helen Holme Simmons, she continued to be known as Helen Bancroft professionally. In 1940, Bancroft travelled to France as a research worker. While conducting research in France, she was based in
Barneville-Carteret in
Normandy. Bancroft was captured by the Germans in 1940 and placed in an
internment camp. By April 1942 she was interned alongside her husband at the Grand Hotel in
Vittel, France. In that month, an announcement was published in
Nature prompting Bancroft's scientific friends to send her letters "during her isolation from scientific life". Bancroft was freed from internment in 1944. She lived for only six further years after regaining her freedom, dying on 2 October 1950. == Honours and memberships ==