A maverick researcher who escaped the confines of university life has died, aged 93.

Ann Moyal was born in Northbridge, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, in 1926, named appropriately after H.?G. Wells¡¯ rebellious heroine Ann Veronica. She attended a private girls¡¯ school and then the University of Sydney, where she gained a first in history.

Although she won a postgraduate scholarship to the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London and could have pursued a conventional academic career, Ms Moyal decided to become a research assistant at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. From 1954 to 1958, she helped the press baron Lord Beaverbrook write Men and Power, 1917-1918 (1956). She shared the hectic social life at his many mansions and even took responsibility for looking after the ailing Winston Churchill at Beaverbrook¡¯s villa on the French Riviera. When she was eventually sacked, she returned to Australia to edit the Australian Dictionary of Biography.

After a spell in the US, partly as science editor at the University of Chicago Press (1967-70), Ms Moyal again returned to Australia, lectured at the New South Wales Institute of Technology ¨C now the University of Technology Sydney ¨C and was appointed director of the Centre for Science Policy at Griffith University. Unhappy with the environment there, she managed to extricate herself by pouring a cup of coffee over the vice-chancellor¡¯s head.

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Freed from university employment, Ms Moyal embraced the status of an independent scholar. Her books included Scientists in Nineteenth Century Australia: A?Documentary History (1976), A?Bright and Savage Land: Scientists in Colonial Australia (1986) and the award-winning Platypus: The Extraordinary Story of How a Curious Creature Baffled the World (2001). She received the Order of Australia for her ¡°contribution to the history of Australian science¡± and also wrote two amusingly indiscreet memoirs, Breakfast with Beaverbrook: Memoirs of an Independent Woman (1995) and A?Woman of Influence: Science, Men & History (2014).

Stuart Macdonald, currently a visiting professor at the University of Leicester¡¯s School of Management, described Platypus as ¡°the epitome of how serious academic study should be presented to a wide audience¡±.

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¡°I knew Ann Moyal as friend and colleague for over 40 years,¡± he went on, ¡°and was frequently put to shame by her energy and determination. Her last email to me, written just three weeks before her death, was typical: ¡®I have rboken [sic] my right arm recently, awful copingy [sic] with one¡¯s left but I¡¯ve been productive and just about to start a new book.¡¯¡±

Ms Moyal died on 21?July.

matthew.reisz@timeshighereducation.com