Rich Pickings: the intellectual life of Josephine Gordon Rich (1866-1940)

Abstract

The title of this paper is a little misleading as the adjective “meagre” rather than “rich” better suits the picking over of the life of Josephine Gordon Rich (1866-1940), but the intentional pun would have been lost. She was one of a handful of women of her generation in New Zealand to actively pursue science and deserves due recognition for her zoological achievements, and this is the aim of this paper. Information gleaned about Rich’s activities and interests is incomplete, enigmatic and largely inferred through the activities of her teacher, Professor Thomas Jeffery Parker (1850-1897) in Dunedin, and her husband, Professor William Aitcheson Haswell (1854-1925) in Sydney.