1. Miriam Rothschild was born in 1908 in Ashton Wold, near Oundle in Northamptonshire, the daughter of Charles Rothschild of the Rothschild banking family of England of Jewish bankers and Rozsika Edle Rothschild, a Hungarian sportswoman, of Austrian-Jewish descent.
Miriam Rothschild's brother was Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild and one of her sisters Pannonica Rothschild would later be a bebop jazz enthusiast and patroness of Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker.
Miriam Rothschild's father had described about 500 new species of flea, and her uncle Lionel Walter Rothschild had built a private natural history museum at Tring.
Miriam Rothschild was educated at home until the age of 17, when she demanded to go to school.
Miriam Rothschild thence attended evening classes in zoology at Chelsea College of Science and Technology and classes during the day in literature at Bedford College, London.
Miriam Rothschild arranged housing for 49 Jewish children, some of whom stayed at her home at Ashton Wold.
Miriam Rothschild was a vegetarian and had a close connection to her pets and wild animals that she befriended.
Miriam Rothschild supported many social causes including animal welfare, free milk for children in schools, and gay rights by contributing to the Wolfenden Report which resulted in decriminalising "homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private".
Miriam Rothschild was the first person to work out the flea's jumping mechanism.
Miriam Rothschild studied the flea's reproductive cycle and linked this, in rabbits, to the hormonal changes within the host.
Miriam Rothschild's New Naturalist book on parasitism was a huge success.
Miriam Rothschild discovered that Large white cabbage butterfly caterpillars fed a diet without carotenoids did not match their background as they typically would and Monarch butterfly caterpillars' pupae had silver threads instead of gold.
Miriam Rothschild drafted a manuscript on the subject and the results were eventually published 12 years after her death.
Miriam Rothschild authored books about her father and her uncle.
Miriam Rothschild wrote about 350 papers on entomology, zoology and other subjects.
Later in her career, Miriam Rothschild grew interested in hay meadow restoration.
Miriam Rothschild was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Miriam Rothschild received honorary doctorates from eight universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, and was an Honorary Fellow of St Hugh's College, Oxford.
Miriam Rothschild was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1985 and was granted the title of Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2000.
Miriam Rothschild was a pioneer among women in entomology and became the first woman trustee of the Natural History Museum, the first woman president of Royal Entomological Society, the first woman to serve on the Committee for Conservation of the National Trust, and the first woman member of the eight-member Entomological Club.
Miriam Rothschild is honoured by the endowed Professorship in Conservation Biology in her name at University of Cambridge.
Miriam Rothschild founded the 'Schizophrenia Research Fund' in 1962, in honour of her sister Liberty after Liberty was diagnosed and hospitalized with schizophrenia.
Miriam Rothschild was both a Trustee and, subsequently, Patron of the Adamson Collection Trust.