My mother, Jennifer Newton, who has died aged 76, had a lifelong passion for understanding and explaining the natural world, and for inspiring others to do the same.
She was the daughter of the distinguished botanist Arthur Roy Clapham and his wife, the statistician Brenda Stoessinger. At the age of 14 Jennifer was enlisted into her father's research team when he could find no one else capable of conducting a grasshopper survey. Such surveys and counts became a major part of her life, and in her last 20 years she walked a two-mile route cataloguing butterflies, 26 weeks a year. Many natural historians, amateur and professional, dropped off samples for her to examine, identify and enter into national databases.
Spiders were an abiding passion, but she also gave her energy and enthusiasm to birds, bats, crickets, plants and trees. In 2007, she was made an MBE for services to nature conservation in north Lancashire – or, as her family liked to say, for "counting things". She was a member of many natural history organisations and helped establish several herself. Whether it was terrifying a prison working party with tales of diving spiders or helping an enthusiast understand identification and data management, she always found joy in sharing knowledge.
Jennifer was born in Oxford, when her father was teaching in the botany department at the university. When she was three, she and her sister Elizabeth were evacuated to the US through an arrangement between Oxford and Yale universities to safeguard academics' children during wartime, as the potential next generation of scholars. While they were away, their younger brother, David, was born.
At Girton College, Cambridge, Jennifer studied zoology and botany. One of the highlights of this time was a bird-surveying trip to Fair Isle, in the far north of Scotland, in 1957. She also played first clarinet in the National Youth Orchestra, and later played for decades in the Haffner Orchestra, Lancaster.
After two years' teaching she returned to academia to take a PhD at Somerville College, Oxford. There she met the physicist David Newton, while they were organising a Halloween party, and they were married in 1964. His work led them to Berkeley, California, where they were entirely untouched by the cultural upheavals of the late 60s. On their return they settled in north Lancashire, leaving only for a couple of years in Geneva when David was working at Cern.
In the 70s, after three stillborn children, they adopted two daughters, me and Gill. For the rest of her life Jennifer divided her time between education, survey work, music and family life. Her open-mindedness meant that no one ever felt wary of asking her questions, and she always delighted in helping them find answers.
She is survived by my father, Gill and me, and her brother, David, and sister, Elizabeth.