Emily Siedeberg was a woman of strength and determination, who rarely gave up once she had set her mind on something. Courageous and dignified, she proved herself a model woman doctor for the period by using her professional skills in the traditional female sphere of community service.
Florence Dissent was an Anglo-Indian medical practitioner in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
After taking her MD in Brussels in 1894, she worked as Assistant Medical Officer at the Edinburgh Hospital and Dispensary for Women and Children, and also penned further novels and short stories. She has also gained recognition among the scientific community for having proposed the word ‘isotope’.
Physician and zoologist Claire Weekes was the first woman to earn a doctorate of science at the University of Sydney, and a long-time advocate for women’s rights.
Suzanne Cory is one of Australia’s most distinguished molecular biologists. Her research has had a major impact in the fields of immunology and cancer.
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.
Using an inheritance from Woods, she established St Margaret’s, a non-denominational maternity home in 1893, and for the next 30 years was involved in its management, initially as president and later as matron.
Jessie Bicknell helped establish postgraduate and specialist training for nurses in New Zealand.
From the 1940s to the 1960s she advised the public to eat more fruit and vegetables and to cut down on sugar, fat and meat, while continuing her practical efforts to improve food quality. One of her successes was to produce better quality bread. Working with scientists, she educated bakers into using flour made by improved methods of extraction to increase its vitamin B1 content.
During the First World War her strong personality and status as the chairman’s wife enabled her to establish a new kind of women’s leadership. Women’s voluntary work was in demand, and largely by use of the recently installed telephone system she organised Red Cross nursing at Hanmer Springs and supervised emergency measures in the influenza epidemic of November 1918. She was appointed an MBE in 1919. The Red Cross remained a lifelong interest: Thyra headed the Culverden sub-centre for over 50 years and was involved in the local and national organisation during the Second World War. She was made a councillor of honour of the New Zealand Red Cross Society in 1957.