Adrienne Clarke
Professor Adrienne Clarke is an Australian scientist whose research contribution to the field of plant genetics, and to commercial ventures that developed from that research, is recognised nationally and abroad.
Category Archives: Science > Botany
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Kathleen Maisey Curtis
Kathleen Maisey Curtis, who later became Lady Rigg, was an exemplary scientist who specialised in mycology and botany and was a founder of plant pathology in New Zealand.
Nancy Mary Adams
Nancy Adams was a botanist, botanical artist and museum curator whose significant contributions to botany included the illustrations for more than 40 publications on New Zealand’s native plants, alpine areas, and common trees, shrubs and flowers, and her 1994 work Seaweeds of New Zealand: an illustrated guide.
Winifred Lily Boys-Smith
Unlike many conservative supporters of sex-differentiated education, Boys-Smith saw the study of home science at university level as ‘a great force in the education of women’ – specifically, the higher education of women. She believed that because of changing social patterns domestic skills had increasingly come to be seen as menial. The educational programme set up by her for the School of Home Science sought to lift the status of the domestic arts by providing a strong scientific education, augmented with technical instruction. An emphasis on science, particularly chemistry, also served to silence those critics who believed that the School of Home Science belonged in a technical institute, not a university.
Maisie Carr
Maisie Fawcett overcame social disadvantage and grasped opportunities that took her to the forefront of a field rarely embraced by women. When most of Australia’s few ecologists were male, Maisie undertook ground-breaking ecological research that revealed unequivocally the damaging effects of cattle on the vegetation and soils of a major Australian water-catchment. She challenged cattlemen’s claims by showing that shrubs, not grasses, regenerated in cattle-eroded grasslands and predicted that grasses, not shrubs, would regenerate under senescing shrubs – eventually confirmed when 1939 fire-regenerated shrubs senesced after Maisie’s death in 1988.
Margaret Rose Preston
Margaret Preston was a leading painter, printmaker and designer.
Anna Amelia Obermeyer
South African botanist Anna Amelia Obermeyer Mauve catalogued more than 4,000 plant specimens from the Kalahari and Soutpansberg regions. She made major contributions to botany journals Flowering Plants of Africa and Bothalia.
Ana Roqué de Duprey
Ana Roqué de Duprey, a prolific educator, writer, and scientist, founded the first woman’s suffrage organization in Puerto Rico in 1917. Known as “Flor del Valle” (“Flower of the Valley”) for her work in botany, she strove to promote educational opportunities and political rights for women in Puerto Rico.
Ada Armytage
Ada’s photographs and her sisters’ diaries, letters and journals make up the Armytage family archive, which preserves the significant moment in history.