Linda Poots was born in 1929 in Tartu, Estonia.[1][2][3][4]
After high school, she attended the University of Tartu, where she began studying bats.[2][4] She then studied zoology at Moscow State University, graduating in 1952.[1][4][5]
From 1948 onward, Poots made pioneering scientific observations of bats hibernating in Estonian caves.[2][4][5] She went on to author many papers on bats in her country.[2] At her urging, bat hibernation sites at Piusa and near Tallinn were protected by the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic in the 1980s.[2][5]
From 1952 to 1957, she taught in the Department of Zoology and Entomology at the Estonian Academy of Agriculture in Tartu, now the Estonian University of Life Sciences.[2][4]
She was a co-founder and the longtime editor in chief of the nature magazine Eesti Loodus, from 1957 until her retirement in 1984.[2][3][4][6] She wrote numerous articles on zoology and travel for this and other publications, and worked as an editor and translator of books on nature.[4]
In 1966, Poots became a founding member of the Estonian Nature Conservation Society.[7]
After retiring from Eesti Loodus, Poots worked in the Tartu University Library from 1984 to 1999, helping classify zoological and medical literature.[4]
Poots married fellow scientist Viktor Masing in 1952.[8] The couple's jointly written travelogue Tuhat tutvust tundrast kõrbeni was published in 1970.[4] She also frequently collaborated with their son, biologist Matti Masing [et].[5]
She died in 2015 at age 86.[1][9]
