Women in Science

Mākereti Papakura, Lucy Moore, Joan Wiffen and Beatrice Hill Tinsley were the four scientists to feature on November’s Women in Science stamp issue. They were remarkable scientists who achieved in the fields of ethnography, botany, palaeontology and cosmology in the 20th century. Their contributions opened our eyes to our past, the natural world, our cultural traditions and legacies, and the universe. These four women exemplified a spirit of intellectual curiosity that widened horizons for those who followed.

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Mākereti Papakura

Raised according to the traditions of her hapū (kinship group) in the small settlement of Parekārangi, south of Rotorua, then educated in English, Mākereti Papakura (18731930) was adept at bridging worlds. An accomplished host and guide at Whakarewarewa, she moved to England in 1912 to marry Oxfordshire landowner Richard Staples-Browne and, after her divorce in 1924, enrolled at the University of Oxford for a BSc in anthropology. Papakura’s lived experience at a time of colonisation, encounter and exchange, alongside her deep appreciation of the mātauranga (knowledge, wisdom, understanding and skills) of her people, meant that her thesis, The Old-Time Māori, provided a nearunique scholarly analysis of customary practices within Te Arawa from the perspective of a woman. Wāhine Māori were critical knowledge holders and practitioners of mātauranga Māori pre-colonisation, with Tainui woman Kahupeka (c. 1400s) credited with the discovery of a wide range of plants and their medicinal properties.

Lucy Moore

A lifelong tramper, mountaineer and beachcomber, Lucy Moore (1906-1987) was fortunate in that her interest in the natural world was supported by her family and encouraged at Epsom Girls Grammar School, where she met her friend and collaborator Lucy Cranwell. Known as one of ‘the Two Lucies’ by classmates at Auckland University College, Moore initially struggled to find employment in science, working as a demonstrator and tutor, but started in the Botany Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) in 1938, focusing on weeds, algae and fungi. Moore’s expertise in botany saw her edit several ground-breaking works of taxonomy, and she continued this work after her retirement from the DSIR in 1971, producing The Oxford Book of New Zealand Plants in 1978. Moore’s meticulously detailed reference works are still regularly picked up by New Zealand scientists, gardeners and nature-lovers.

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Beatrice Hill Tinsley

In the second half of the 20th century, further fields of scientific discovery became accessible to women. After graduating from Canterbury University College with an MSc in physics, Beatrice Hill Tinsley (1941-1981) completed a PhD on the evolution of galaxies at the University of Texas at Austin. As a theoretical astrophysicist, her main tool was not a telescope, but a computer. Through her research, which covered star formation, stellar evolution and galactic evolution, she concluded that rather than having constant luminosity, galaxies became dimmer with age. In her short but remarkable career in the United States, Hill Tinsley proved that the universe was infinite and would expand forever, and that galaxies evolved and interacted with each other.

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Joan Wiffen

Other women came to science without university training, and without paid employment. A geology night class inspired Joan Wiffen (1922-2009) to start fossicking for minerals and fossils. Her greatest discoveries were found close to her Hawke’s Bay home, in the Mangahouanga Stream north of Napier, which she explored with her husband Pont and their two children. There, she found the fossils of ancient marine reptiles such as the mosasaur and plesiosaur and, in 1975, Aotearoa’s first dinosaur bone - a tail bone from a theropod, a carnivorous dinosaur that walked on two legs. Wiffen continued fossil hunting, and writing scientific papers to describe her finds, until well into her 80s. Her finds included carnivorous and herbivorous dinosaurs, including theropods, a sauropod, an armoured ankylosaur and a flying reptile called a pterosaur.

This piece is based on an article by Kate Hannah and Rebecca Priestley. Read the full article in New Zealand Stories in Stamps 2022 published by NZ Post Collectables.