Historical Portraits of Women Home Scientists: The University Of ...

Drawing on the work of Finkelstein and Ribbens,³⁸ the biographical portraits that are sketched in this book illuminate issues of historical voice as well as the connections between an individual’s life story and larger political, economic, cultural, social, and generational processes. This is both the usefulness and the messiness of the portrait and portraiture; there is no linear frame or static image to capture one’s gaze but rather a series of images, reflections that are subject to interpretation. This has contributed to the richness of the portraits that we present.

These portraits of women scientists highlight the connections these women shared within their own institution and across the field nationally and internationally. Individual portraits of six women are presented to highlight their professional connections and collective ties, their intellectual influences, their commitment to advancing scientific knowledge in the field, and their self-conscious promotion of the careers of like-minded women. That each woman was resident in New Zealand and worked in the same department was neither accidental nor coincidental. Significantly too, as their individual portraits will stress, the intellectual genealogies of these women were connected. In chapter 2, we frame the biographical portraits of the first four women professors: Winifred Boys-Smith, Helen Rawson Benson, Ann Munroe Gilchrist Strong, and Elizabeth Gregory. We then present individual portraits of two graduates, Elizabeth Neige Todhunter and Catherine Landreth, in chapter 3. The historical and institutional landscapes that shaped, confronted, and ultimately connected these individual lives are thus important to understand to assist with the reading and viewing of these portraits. The next section