A FAMOUS TWIN

NZ Truth, Issue 1103, 20 January 1927, Page 4

A FAMOUS TWIN

ARE twins more likely than the rest • of .us to be geniuses? This is sometimes alleged; also it is said that one is strong at the expense of the other. The latter, any way, was not the case with the "Cruickshanks twins," as they, were called, some decades ago,, m old Dunedin. y Christina and Margaret, both were mens sana m corpore sano, and both were duces, bracketed equal, of the Girls' High School m the same year. 7 Both were of the scholarship-taking order, and Dr. Margaret Cruickshank, whose statue now adorns one town — .•'■'■ for work done at the plague time, causing her death — was as brilliant a mathematician as Miss .Christina Cruickshank, for many years headmistress of the. Wanganui Girls* College. This appointment, given her not long after, leaving the University, carried with it the then largest salary awarded any woman m New Zealand — £700, with board, etc". — and the way she uses it is a strong argument against any Mussolini-like attempt to introduce a spinster tax. v Kind m her youth also was Miss Cruickshank: Some old companions of here met the others day 'and enthused over the good nature with which she helped the mathematical duffers In her. class when they approached her.with a' difficulty. "She,. the most advanced, was also the most willing.