Ākenehi Hei

Her ability and dedication to her task overcame initial opposition and became a beacon for others, both Māori and Pākehā, when a Māori health nursing service was officially established in 1911.

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Elizabeth Joan Batham

Batham was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1962. She also served a term as president of the New Zealand Marine Sciences Society in 1966. She was promoted to senior lecturer in 1960 and to reader in 1967.

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Patricia Marjorie Ralph

Marine biologist Pat Ralph specialised in marine hydroids, which before she began publishing were little studied in New Zealand; she published five seminal papers on the thecate hydroids of New Zealand between 1957 and 1961. Her pioneering work won worldwide recognition and in 1962 she received the rarely given DSc; she was the first woman on the staff of Victoria University College to receive the degree.

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Eliza Amy Hodgson

The letters she received over 40 years are an invaluable historical record of hepaticology during that time. Working from home at her ‘moss bench’, her microscope in the light of a window and her typewriter on the dining-room table, Amy Hodgson published more than 30 papers between 1930 and 1972. She described two new families of liverworts and nine new genera; most have stood the test of time.

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Dr Mary Putnam Jacobi

American physician Mary Putnam Jacobi was the first woman to graduate from the New York College of Pharmacy, and the first woman to study medicine at the University of Paris.

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Florence Bascom

American geologist, Bascom was the second woman to earn Ph.D in geology in the United States, in 1893. She became the first woman to work for the United States Geological Survey in 1896.

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