HIGH HONOUR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27079, 13 May 1949, Page 6

HIGH HONOUR

WOMAN GEOGRAPHERS’ SOCIETY

DISTINCTION FOR DR MARPLES

An unusual honour has been bestowed upon Dr M. J. Marples, of the Bacteriology Department of the Otago Medical School. Dr Marples has just been elected to corresponding membership of the Society of Woman Geographers. The only other member in New Zealand is Miss Violet Roche, of Wellington, the well-known writer and lecturer. Dr Marples was proposed by Mrs Grace Murphy, wife of Dr Cushman Murphy.

The Society of Woman Geographers has its headquarters in Washington, DC, United States of America. It was organised in 1925 by a group who felt that there should be some medium of

contact between women engaged in geographical work and allied sciences such as ethnology, archaeology, biology, bacteriology, and sociology. For membership only those travelled women are eligible who have done distinctive work by which they have added to the world’s store of knowledge concerning the countries on which they have specialised, and have published or produced in permanent form a record of their work.

Among the necessary qualifications are that the candidate must have made some original application of the fruits of travel and research in one of five forms: (a) Published books or articles of importance: (b) paintings, drawings, or sculpture which have been shown under professional auspices or used as scientific or geographic illustration; (c) published music which records folk music or uses personally collected folk material in original compositions; (d) photography of geographical significance and professional quality; (e) lectures based upon original research or observations.

The president of the society is Marie Peary Stafford, the well-known writer on the Arctic! and Greenland. Many famous women are numbered among the members, Including: Helen Damrosch Tee-Van, well known in the scientific world for her paintings of animals and flowers and under-sea paintings: Lydia van Zandt, writer and lecturer; Taiso Stadnichenko, geologist,' United States Geological Survey; Dr Winifred M. Ashley, bacteriologist and author; Mrs Vilhjalmur Stefansson, writer and geographer; Mary Vander Pyl, zoologist research worker, an associate on the staff of the famous Dr William Beebe; and Lady Petrie, the English explorer, Egyptologist;, and draughtsman.