THE LATE DR. BELLA D McCALLUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 89, 16 April 1927, Page 24

THE LATE DR. BELLA D McCALLUM.

A ROMANTIC CAREER

Xews has recently been received of the death of Dr. Bella D. McCallum, wife of Professor P. McCallum, of the Department of Pathology in the University of Melbourne. As Bella D. Cross, the late Mrs. McCallum was well known to the students of Canterbury College from 1904 to 1910. She had previously attended the Timaru Girls' High School, where she had been dux of the school, and she commenced her college career by gaining a Junior University Scholarship. She completed her B.A. degree in 1908 and then proceeded to the M.A. in botany, preparing a thesis on Observations on Some New Zealand Halophytes. For this she was awarded first-class honours by the examiner in England, Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour, of Edinburgh University. Soon afterwards she gained a Government Research Scholarship and remained at the college for some time preparing an elaborate report on the varieties of phormium, the New Zealand flax. She married Mr. Jennings, who lost his life in the war, after which she returned to Canterbury College and did important research work, through which she gained the degree of Doctor of Science, the first woman in New Zealand to achieve this. In England later she was the first woman to act as demonstrator in the University of Edinburgh.' There in 1919, she married Dr. P. McCallum, who had been a contemporary of Mis. Jennings, when Miss Cross was in Canterbury. A daughter was born, and the appointment of Dr. McCallum to the professorship of pathology in Melbourne opened up bright prospects, now cancelled bv news from that city of her death. *A strangely nungled career of romance and intelI lectual achievement! "~"