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Sheina Macalister Marshall (20 April 1896 – 7 April 1977) was a Scottish Marine biology who studied plant and animal plankton. She was an authority on the copepod Calanus. She worked at the Marine Biological Station at Millport, Cumbrae in Scotland from 1922-1964.Charles H. Smith, Chrono-biographical sketch: Sheina M. Marshall, 2005. Accessed 18 December 2011.
Initially Marshall was educated by , later attending Rothesay Academy and St Margaret's School in Polmont. In 1914 she entered the University of Glasgow to study for a BSc in Zoology, botany and physiology. After an interruption in her studies due to World War I she graduated with honours in 1919. She held a Carnegie Fellowship at the University from 1920 to 1922 and worked with the professor of zoology, John Graham Kerr.
Marshall studied the marine food chain, in particular copepods. This became her life's work. She collaborated for almost 40 years with the chemist, Andrew Picken Orr. Together they studied the plankton and Algal bloom in and around the river Clyde and Loch Striven. They authored several books and many papers together.
In 1934 Marshall received a DSc from the University of Glasgow.
In the 1940s she worked with Lillie Newton and Elsie Conway as well as Orr to develop from around the United Kingdom as a source of agar for pharmaceutical purposes since imports from traditional sources in the Middle East were prevented by the Second World War. She also examined the effect of on marine productivity at Loch Sween.
She retired as Deputy Director of the Station in 1964 (having been appointed to this post on the death of Orr, the previous post-holder, in 1962). She continued research there as an Honorary Fellow.
Between 1970 and 1971 she attended the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the United States and she visited the Villefranche-sur-Mer Marine Station in France 1974. In 1987 she published a history of the Marine Station.
She died of a heart attack at Lady Margaret Hospital, Millport, Cumbrae on 7 April 1977. She bequeathed her house at Millport to the Directors of Millport.
Her sisters were Margaret Marshall OBE, Matron at Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary and Dorothy Nairn Marshal MBE, a museum curator on Bute.
She was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1966. In 1977 she received an honorary degree from the University of Uppsala, Sweden.
The teaching building at Scottish Association for Marine Science at Dunbeg was named in her honour in 2010.
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